Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

SPECIES COMPOSITION OF SPIDER-FAUNA IN PADDY ECOSYSTEM THROUGHOUT THE CROPPING PERIOD AT SABOUR, BIHAR, INDIA

Munna Yadav, Tarak Nath Goswami, Anil and Shree Niwash Ray

Abstract

Spiders are important natural regulator of insect population in agriculture ecosystem. In order to understand the diversity of spiders in paddy, an experiment was conducted during last Kharif, season (2014). Spiders were collected from pesticide free transplanted paddy (variety-MTU7029) field by sweep net technique at every 15 days interval starting from 15 to 105 days after transplanting (DAT). A total of 983 individuals belonging to 6 families, 10 genera and 16 species (including 5 unidentified species) were collected. These individuals were categorized into four guilds of spiders namely, ground runner, orb weavers, stalkers and ambushers. The orb weavers (55.8%) dominated over the other guilds of spiders followed by stalkers (24.2%), ground runners (16.2%) and ambushers (3.8%). Amongst the different families, Tetragnathidae constituted highest number of individuals (42.8%) followed by Oxyopidae (18.8%), Lycosidae (16.2%), Araneidae (13.0%), Salticidae (5.4%) and Thomosidae (3.8%). The highest number (05) of species were belonging to the family Tetragnathidae which was followed by Oxyopidae and Araneidae (each having 03 species). Various indices like Shannon-Wiener index (H1), Simpson index (λ), Margalef Richness index (R) and Evenness index (E) were also worked out during seven different observation period.