Testing side effects of pesticides on spiders (Pardosa spp.) in the laboratory

Abstract

Spiders occur in high densities and with a large variety of species in agricultural crops (Sunderland, 1991). Their polyphagous nature and relative abundance in many crops makes them an important group of beneficial arthropods. Therefore spiders (Pardosa spp.) were selected in a SETAC guidance document as test organisms for registration purposes (Barrett et al., 1994). A draft of a method was developed for testing ground-dwelling spiders of the genus Pardosa by Wehling and Heimbach (1994) and Wehling (1995). Because test methods have to produce reproducible results in order to gain international acceptance, at the moment this method is in the stage of validation at several testing laboratories in Europe. Results presented in this chapter were elaborated by the following laboratories: Federal Biological Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry, Braunschweig; Sprinborn Laboratories, Horn; Zeneca Agrochemicals, Jealott’s Hill; AEU, Southampton; ECT Ökotoxikologie, Flörsheim; IBACON, Rossdorf; Bayer, Monheim; BASF, Limburgerhof; Huntingdon Life Sciences, Huntingdon; Dr U. Noack Laboratorium, Sarstedt.