To establish if the spider communities in cotton at different locations around Australia are similar, we sampled, using beatsheets and pitfall traps, over 4500 spiders from seven locations extending from the tropical north to the temperate south.

We found that the spider communities around Australia are not structurally identical in that the most prominent spiders do not forage using the same methods. In the spider community sampled by beatsheets, the communities in the south were dominated by Oxyopidae (lynx spiders) which are stalkers; while the communities in the north were dominated by Cycloctenidae, which is a foliage runner. In the more central locations, the most dominant family rotated through lynx spiders (stalker), Clubionidae (yellow night stalkers; which are foliage runners), Salticidae (jumping spiders, which are stalkers), Theridiidae (tangle web spiders, which are web builders), to Clubionidae.

The spider community sampled by pitfall traps was also influenced by seasonal changes, but this was less important than the BDI (or spraying regime) the field had received. This community was overwhelmingly dominated by Lycosidae (wolf spiders, which are ground runners) throughout the year. Exceptions were a few samples taken at the beginning of the season under low BDI where other families, such as Gnaphosidae, which is also a ground runner, nearly equaled wolf spiders in numbers. Most of these samples were from Katherine.

These results mean that spiders in cotton at different locations around Australia will have . Consequently, the incorporation of spiders more directly into IPM will need to be tailored for each location.