Spider Diversity (Arachnida: Araneae) in Different Ecosystems of the Western Ghats, Wayanad Region, India

Abstract

|Spiders are key components of all ecosystems in which they live and considered to be useful indicators of the overall species richness and health of terrestrial communities. However, spiders of the Western Ghats are poorly explored group and detailed information about their systematics, diversity and ecology is scarce. The present study is an attempt to investigate the spider faunal diversity in the selected habitats in the Western Ghats of North Wayanad region, Kerala, India. A total of 150 species belonging to 73 genera under 20 families were recorded from the selected habitats. Kartikulam forest reserve (Site D) showed the highest species richness and lowest species richness was recorded from Mananthavady region (Site A). Guild structure analysis of the collected spiders revealed seven functional groups viz. stalkers, orb-web builders, ambushers, space-web builder, ground runners, foliage runners and sheet-web builders. To conclude, the highest species richness is correlated with flora and fauna in these sites. The knowledge generated from the present study gives valuable and updated information on diversity of species of Western Ghats and the data can be used for future research on spider fauna.

Faunal diversity of orb-weaver spiders (Araneidae: Araneomorphae: Araneae: Arachnida) in India

“…Cyrtarachne keralensis Sunil Jose, 2011  Goa (Halarnkar andPai, 2018;Pandit and Dharwadkar, 2020)  Karnataka (Bhat et al, 2013;Vaibhav et al, 2017;Abhijith, 2019)  Kerala (Sunil Jose, 2011;Malamel et al, 2015;Jose et al, 2018;Smitha and Sudhikumar, 2020;Sumesh and Sudhikumar, 2020)  Odisha (Gravely, 1921)  Tamil Nadu (Caleb, 2020a;Kadam and Rajkumar, 2020)  Uttar Pradesh (Lawania and Mathur, 2014a)  West Bengal (Saha et al, 2017) Elsewhere: China, Indonesia, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand 8. Arachnura angura Tikader, 1970*  Goa (Pandit and Dharwadkar, 2020)  Karnataka (Bhat et al, 2013;Prashanthakumara and Venkateshwarlu, 2017)  Kerala (Tikader, 1982;Patel, 2003a;Sudhikumar et al, 2005a;Sunil Jose et al, 2008;Adarsh and Nameer, 2015;Jose et al, 2018;Rajeevan et al, 2019)  Maharashtra (Kulkarni and Deshpande, 2012;Rithe, 2012;More and Sawant, 2013)  Sikkim (Tikader, 1970(Tikader, , 1982  Tamil Nadu (Kapoor, 2008)  West Bengal (Sen et al, 2015;Raychaudhuri et al, 2016) 9. Arachnura melanura Simon, 1867  Kerala (Roewer, 1942;Sen and Sureshan, 2020)  Uttar Pradesh (Hore and Uniyal, 2008a, b;Uniyal and Hore, 2009) ...…”

“…Syn. Araneus excelsus (Simon 1889); Glyptogona excelsa Simon, 1889; Neoscona excelsus (Simon 1889)  Andhra Pradesh (Palem et al, 2016)  Arunachal Pradesh  Assam (Das et al, 2015;Saha et al, 2015;Basumatary and Brahma, 2017)  Bihar (Tikader and Biswas, 1981;Tikader, 1982;Majumder, 2005)  Chhattisgarh (Tikader and Bal, 1981;Tikader and Biswas, 1981;Ekka and Kujur, 2015)  Delhi (Malik et al, 2015)  Gujarat (Tikader and Bal, 1981;Tikader and Biswas, 1981;Tikader, 1982;Patel and Vyas, 2001;Patel, 2003b;Majumder, 2005;Siliwal et al, 2003a, b;Yadav et al, 2017;Yadav and Kumar, 2019)  Haryana (Malik and Goyal, 2017)  Jammu and Kashmir (Chandra et al, 2021)  Jharkhand (Tikader, 1982)  Karnataka (Nautiyal et al, 2017;Mubeen and Basavarajappa, 2018;Nijagal et al, 2020)  Kerala (Sebastian et al, 2005a;Jose et al, 2018;Rajeevan et al, 2019)  Madhya Pradesh (Gajbe, 2004c)  Maharashtra (Tikader and Bal, 1981;Tikader and Biswas, 1981;Tikader, 1982;Majumder, 2005;…”

“…Syn. Araneus laglaizei (Simon, 1877); Epeira laglaisei Simon, 1877; Epeira laglaizei (Simon, 1877); Neoscona laglaizei (Simon, 1877)  Andhra Pradesh (Rao et al, 2005)  Assam (Ahmed et al, 2015c)  Goa (Bastawade and Borkar, 2008;Halarnkar and Pai, 2018)  Gujarat (Siliwal et al, 2003a, b;Yadav et al, 2017)  Karnataka (Bhat et al, 2013)  Kerala (Patel, 2003a;Sebastian et al, 2005a, b;Sunil Jose et al, 2008;Adarsh and Nameer, 2015;John and Tom, 2018;Jose et al, 2018;Rajeevan et al, 2019)  Madhya Pradesh (Gajbe, 2003b)  Maharashtra (Bastawade and Khandal, 2006;Meshram, 2011;Rithe, 2012;More and Sawant, 2013; Shirbhate and Shirbhate, 2017)  Manipur (Kananbala et al, 2018)  Odisha (Choudhury et al, 2019)  Puducherry (Simon, 1906)  Tamil Nadu (Pocock, 1900;Simon, 1906;Sherriffs, 1919;Tikader and Bal, 1981;Tikader and Biswas, 1981;Tikader, 1982;Hore and Uniyal, 2008a;Kapoor, 2008;Uniyal and Hore, 2009;Karthikeyani et al, 2017;Dharmaraj et al, 2018;Caleb, 2020a;Caleb and Ka...…”

“…Gasteracantha geminata (Fabricius, 1798) Syn. Aranea geminata Fabricius, 1798  Andhra Pradesh (Rao et al, 2005)  Goa (Bastawade and Borkar, 2008;Pandit and Dharwadkar, 2020)  Gujarat Parmar, 2018)  Karnataka (Pocock, 1900;Sherriffs, 1929;Tikader, 1982;Bhat et al, 2013;Prashanthakumara and Venkateshwarlu, 2017;Vaibhav et al, 2017;Mubeen and Basavarajappa, 2018;Rao et al, 2018;Caleb, 2020a)  Kerala (Joseph et al, 1998;Patel, 2003a;Sebastian et al, 2005a, b;Sunil Jose et al, 2008;Nameer, 2015, 2016;Sankaran et al, 2015;Rajeevan et al, 2019;Caleb, 2020a)  Maharashtra (Bastawade and Khandal, 2006;More and Sawant, 2013)  Odisha (Choudhury et al, 2019)  Puducherry (Simon, 1885a)  Tamil Nadu (Fabricius, 1798;Sherriffs, 1919;Reimoser, 1934;Tikader, 1982;Sivaperuman and Thiyakesan, 1999;Sugimaran et al, 2007;Kapoor, 2008;Karthikeyani et al, 2017;Caleb, 2020a, b)  Tripura (Das and Deb, 2020)  Uttar Pradesh (Hore and Uniyal, 2008a, b;Uniyal and Hore, 2009) Elsewhere: Sri Lanka…”

“…Syn. Epeira mammillaris Stoliczka, 1869;Herennia ornatissima (Doleschall, 1859)  Andhra Pradesh (Sen et al, 2015)  Arunachal Pradesh (Biswas and Biswas, 2006;Caleb and Kumar, 2018)  Assam (Stoliczka, 1869;Chetia and Kalita, 2012;Singh et al, 2012;Das et al, 2015;Gupta et al, 2015;Basumatary and Brahma, 2017)  Chhattisgarh (Gajbe, 2003b(Gajbe, , 2005  Goa (Tikader, 1982;Gajbe, 2005;Pandit and Pai, 2017;Bastawade and Borkar, 2008;Pandit and Pai, 2017;Pandit and Dharwadkar, 2020)  Gujarat (Patel, 2003b;Yadav et al, 2017)  Karnataka (Bhat et al, 2013;Vaibhav et al, 2017;Mubeen and Basavarajappa, 2018;Fernandes and Ganesh, 2020)  Kerala (Pocock, 1900;Subramanian, 1955;Patel, 2003a;Sudhikumar et al, 2005a;Sunil Jose et al, 2008;Adarsh and Nameer, 2015;Rajeevan et al, 2019)  Madhya Pradesh (Gajbe, 2005)  Maharashtra (Bastawade and Khandal, 2006;More and Sawant, 2013)  Meghalaya (Tikader, 1982;Biswas and Majumder, 1995;Bhattacharya et al, 2017)  Mizoram…”