Species richness and diversity of spiders in the semiarid habitats of North India Anjali*, Jindal Vikas, Prakash Sant1 Department of Entomology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, 141004 1Molecular Genetics Laboratory Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Dayalbagh Educational Institute, Agra, 282005 *Email: anjali11dei@gmail.com (corresponding author)
Abstract A total of 1140 spiders belonging to 31 species, 11 families and 26 genera were recorded from Agra (Uttar Pradesh), Ludhiana and Kapurthala (Punjab) in north India. Araneidae (20%) was the most predominant family followed by Tetragnathidae (17%), Salticidae (14%), Eresidae (11%), Lycosidae (10%), Selenopidae (10%), Hersilidae (7%), Oxyopidae (7%), Sparassidae (2%) and Thomisidae (2%). Standardization of collection techniques and assessment of species richness during the pre and post monsoon period were accomplished. Observations revealed that the best fit method for collection was in the following order: visual searching (44%)>hand collection (33%)> pit fall (7%) >beating (7%) transect (6%)> sweep net (3%). Species richness was computed using Shannon (H1) (3.03), Simpson (λ) (0.0624) and Dominance (0.938) indices, which shows good diversity. This study is in continuity with surveys done from the semiarid habitats, and it revealed that diversity increased to 65 species from north India with the present study. Top Keywords Spiders, biodiversity, indices, Agra, Ludhiana, Kapurthala, species richness, families, sampling methods. Top |