Use of spider webs as indicators of air quality assessment of Lahore City

Abstract

High level of heavy metal contaminants in air is known to cause serious health problems if remained unchecked for a long period of time. Anthropogenic activities such as vehicular emissions and number of industries are responsible for increasing the level of heavy metals. The aim of the present study was to biologically monitor the level of heavy metal contamination by spider webs. These sites were selected based on variable traffic volume and number of industries. Atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) was used for the analysis of metal pollution content. The study determined that the level of heavy metals at the selected sampling sites were several folds higher than that at the control site and in previously reported literature. Pb was determined to be the most abundant heavy metal, while Thokar Niaz Baig was reported as the most contaminated site. These elevated levels of metal contaminants are associated with heavy traffic flow, number of industries and constructional activities in the respective areas.

Do cave orb spiders show unique behavioural adaptations to subterranean life? A review of the evidence

“…Similarly, pesticides, heavy metals and organic pollution can enter the subterranean environment through occasional trogloxene visitors and underground streams (Wood et al, 2008;Medellin et al, 2017;Modrá et al, 2018). Epigean spiders are known to modify their behaviour and orb web geometry in response to pesticides Benamú et al, 2013;Pasquet et al, 2016) and pesticide and heavy metal pollution can be determined from absorbed residues in spider silk Xiao-Li et al, 2006;Tahir et al, 2018). Thus, it is an intriguing possibility that Meta webs and silks can be used as bioassays for assessing wider cave pollution levels.…”

The use of spider webs in the monitoring of air quality—A review

“…We noted diversity in the spider species whose webs were used for bioindication studies (Figure 2). Some articles (Ayedun et al, 2013; Riaz et al, 2014) provided no information about the spider species or stated only the spider families (Tahir et al, 2018; van Laaten et al, 2020), which accounts for 21.05% of all analyzed articles. On the other hand, the webs of Eratigena atrica were used in approximately 30% of the articles, which makes this species the most commonly used in air pollution biomonitoring.…”