A preliminary study was conducted to document spider diversity in Gudvi bird Sanctuary, Shivamogga District, Karnataka, India. The study was conducted from January 2015 to December 2015. A total of 71 species of spiders belonging to 58 genera from 18 families were identified in the sanctuary. This accounted for 4.21% of Indian spider species, 13.24% of Indian spider genera and 30% of the spider families of India. The dominant families was Salticidae (17 species), Araneidae (16 sp.) and Theridiidae (9 sp.). A guild structure analysis of the spiders revealed, eight different feeding guilds were observed. Among these stalkers are most dominant (28%) group followed by orb web weavers (25%), ground runner (23%), and space web spiders (13%). The other groups like foliage runners (4%), sheet web spiders (3%), Ambushers (3%) and Burrowers (1%) are have very less number of species.
