Spiders play an important role in regulating insect pests in the agricultural ecosystem.
There are a large number of species, many of them with high population densities. There are
22 families, 99 genera and 175 species of spiders in Korean rice fields. They limit the availability
of habitats open to insect pests of rice by occupying various microhabitats. They have a
wide range of prey species, catch significant numbers of prey and use various foraging strategies.
Most of the spiders in rice fields seem to evacuate the field after the application of insecticides
and move back into the field later. Their predatory capacity can have a synergistic effect
in suppressing densities of insect pests when they are used to complement the effect of insecticides.