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Sa Fruit Journal Aug Sept 2021 Grey House Spider Featured
August / September 2021

Spinning a new story in Citrus – A first record of two spider species

SA Fruit Journal: August / September 2021

Spiders fulfil a critical function in a variety of ecosystems. By Tamryn Marsberg, Mellissa Peyper and Sean Moore, Citrus Research International, Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth)

The majority of spider species are known to be useful generalist predators of various invertebrates, particularly insects (Dippenaar-Schoeman 1998; Haddad et al., 2003). Until the late 1990s, 21 families of spider were recognised In South African citrus orchards, including 72 genera and 82 species (Dippenaar-Schoeman 1998), most of which were collected from Burgershall in Mpumalanga Province (Van den Berg et al., 1992). A more extensive survey was subsequently conducted over two years in four different citrus growing areas, revealing up to 219 probable species of spider in 33 different families (Stephen et al., 2000).

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