Belinda beating Huon pine bushes (near Strahan) to extract invertebrates. Image: Belinda Yaxley

Tasmania has the richest diversity of native conifers in Australia, but very little is known about the animals which depend on them. Arthropods were sampled from the foliage of 10 species of conifer from a cross section of habitats including next to the Huon River at Warra. The collection included 15,000 individuals from 130 families. Some conifers supported more than twice the diversity of arthropods than others and only 7 taxa were found on all 10 species of conifers. Arthropods were assembled into guilds in order to compare communities between conifers. Leaf-chewers and sap-suckers were the dominant guilds. Architecturally complex conifer foliage supports high densities of spiders and the highest diversity of spider species occurs on tall conifers at low altitudes, especially those growing in riparian habitats. Plant chemistry appears to differ at conifer family and genus levels. It may play a major role in determining the fauna that feed on these trees because species richness does differ between the conifer families Podocarpaceae and Cupressaceae. This is the first community level study of arthropods on Tasmanian conifers and provides a unique insight into plant-animal relationships on an ancient element of the flora.