Volume 7 | Issue - 1 articles in press
Volume 7 | Issue - 1 articles in press
Volume 7 | Issue - 1 articles in press
Volume 7 | Issue - 1 articles in press
Volume 7 | Issue - 1 articles in press
Having inhabited the planet for approximately 400 million years ago, spiders are a large and diverse class of predatory arthropods that hold a unique position as the largest class of arthropods in nature. Because of their resistance to starvation and desiccation as well as their capacity to catch prey with their web architecture, spiders have the potential to be used as biocontrol agents in a range of environmental settings. Coimbatore, which is close to the Western Ghats range, is a better location for studying biodiversity. In order to observe the morphology of spiders belonging to various families and patterns of web construction, the current investigation seeks to provide a baseline comparative study of spider diversity, types of webs and prey capturing in two localities, Site A - Semmedu and Site B - Alandurai in Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India. Every chosen location was sampled using a visual search technique and all species along with the web type was captured on camera using a DSLR. According to this study, 103 individuals were found in Sites A and B. Of these, 48 species were identified, representing 28 genera across 9 families: Araneidae (32%), Salticidae (30%), Lycosidae (17%), Oxyopidae (13%), Hersiliidae (3%), Pisauridae (2%), Sparassidae (1%), Tetragnathaidae (1%) and Thomisidae (1%). The Simpson's, Shannon-Weiner, Margalef, and Menhinick indices were used to calculate the Diversity index and conclude that Site A – Semmedu is highly diversed with 1.643 for Shannon-Weiner, 0.7665 for Simpson Index,1.703 in Margalef and 1.024 for Menhinick index.