Spider Diversity (Arachnida: Araneae) at Sree Krishna College Campus, Thrissur (Dist), Kerala, India

Spiders are the most diverse groups of censoriously analysed biological species in diversity on the planet. The present study surveyed and listed out the spider fauna inside the campus of Sree Krishna College, Kerala, India to reveal the distribution and diversity of spider fauna. There were 51 species of spiders belonging to 37 genera of 14 families collected from different locales of Sree Krishna college campus. For the study the entire campus has been surveyed, by dividing the area into four sites, Site A (main block of the campus), Site B (south region of the campus), Site C (botanical garden) and Site D (the women’s hostel and its premises). Site C showed the highest species richness and the lowest species richness was recorded from Site B. Salticidae was the dominant family with twelve species followed by Araneidae (10 sps.), Oxyopidae (5 sps.), Theridiidae (4 sps.), Lycosidae, (3 sps.), Tetragnathidae (3 sps.) and Sparassidae (3 sps.), Thomisidae (2 sps.), Pholcidae (2 sps.). But, a single species of spider has been identified within the families Hersilidae, Linyphiidae, Uloboridae, Cheiracanthiidae, and Sicariidae. Diversity indices, including evenness, richness, and diversity, were calculated. The evaluated values for the Shannon, Simpson, Margalef Richness, Berger-Parker, and Menhinick's indices were 3.423, 0.9580, 9.540, 0.9101, and 3.709, respectively. It is concluded that the study site had a good abundance and evenness index (e = 0.871). There was variation in the distribution of the various spider species, as indicated by their abundance and % occurrence. Seven functional groups were identified by analysing the guild structure of the spiders that were collected: stalkers (32.28%), orb-web builders (31.75%), space-web builders (15.87%), foliage runners (13.76), ground runners (3.70%), ambushers (1.59%), and wandering sheet-web builders (1.06%). This work establishes a biodiversity database to support future investigations into the spider fauna and provides useful data on the predominance of the spider population in the study area.