There are 8 families of web spinners found worldwide, consisting of only 200 species. In Australia 3 of these families are represented with just 65 species present. Although it seems that Australia has quite a large proportion of the total world species of web spinners with 64 out of the 200 represented here. However field work indicates there may be as many as 2000 species in total but because of their habit of remaining mostly concealed in silken galleries they are seldom encountered. Follow the links below to find out more about the known families of web spinners. Those in bold represent the web spinner families present in Australia.

For web spinner species visit the Australian Insect Common Names