Spiders in restored habitat: How important are dead standing trees?

There is relatively little known about any potential benefits to invertebrates of the provision of standing dead trees in areas rehabilitated following major disturbances. This study describes the effects on spiders of a tree thinning experiment at Huntly Bauxite mine, 110 km south-east of Perth, Western Australia, that created a large number of dead stags in a rehabilitated mine pit by notching and herbicide injection. Spiders were sampled over a six-month period on 159 jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) trees using bark traps, which catch spiders as they walk up the tree trunk (Figs 1). Small dead and live trees were sampled in a restored mine pit and surrounding forest in order to assess the benefit of dead stags to spiders and to compare spider distribution in the forest and mine pit. In the forest, three tree size categories were sampled to study the effect of tree size on spiders