Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 April 2016 | 8(4): 8703–8713

 

 

 

A preliminary checklist of spiders (Araneae: Arachnida) in Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, Western Ghats, India

C.K. Adarsh 1 & P.O. Nameer 2

 

1,2 Centre for Wildlife Sciences, College of Forestry, Kerala Agricultural University, Thrissur, Kerala 680656, India

1 adarshckcof09@gmail.com, 2 nameer.po@kau.in (corresponding author)

 

 

 

 

 

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.11609/jott.2740.8.4.8703-8713 | ZooBank: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:3C3B994D-DE71-431C-B6AA-ABF7907F53DF

 

Editor: Manju Siliwal, WILD, Coimbatore, India. Date of publication: 26 April 2016 (online & print)

 

Manuscript details: Ms # 2740 | Received 11 March 2015 | Final received 01 April 2016 | Finally accepted 05 April 2016

 

Citation: Adarsh, C.K. & P.O. Nameer (2016). A preliminary checklist of spiders (Araneae: Arachnida) in Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, Western Ghats, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 8(4): 8703–8713; http://dx.doi.org/10.11609/jott.2740.8.4.8703-8713

 

Copyright: © Adarsh & Nameer 2016. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. JoTT allows unrestricted use of this article in any medium, reproduction and distribution by providing adequate credit to the authors and the source of publication.

 

Funding: Kerala Agricultural University.

 

Conflict of Interest: The authors declare no competing interests.

 

Acknowledgements: We thank the Wildlife Warden, Munnar Wildlife Division and the Assistant Wildlife Warden Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary for the logistical support. Our sincere thanks to Dr. A.V. Sudhikumar for helping us with the confirmation of the identification of the spiders. Our thanks are due to the Dean, College of Forestry, Kerala Agricultural University for encouragement and support and R. Sreehari for the map of the study area. We also thank the anonymous reviewers and the subject editor for their critical comments which greatly improved the manuscript.

 

 

Abstract: A preliminary study was conducted to document spider diversity in Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, Idukki District, Kerala State in southern India. The study was conducted from October to November 2012. A total of 101 species of spiders belonging to 65 genera from 29 families were identified from the sanctuary. This accounted for 6.98% of Indian spider species, 17.81% of Indian spider genera and 48.33% of the spider families of India. The dominant families were Lycosidae (11 species) and Araneidae (10). Two endemic genera of Indian spiders such as Annandaliella and Neoheterophrictus were found at Chinnar, each representing one species each, and belonging to the family Theraphosidae. A guild structure analysis of the spiders revealed seven feeding guilds such as orb weavers, stalkers, ground runners, foliage runners, sheet web builders, space web builders and ambushers.

 

Keywords: Endemism, guild structure, Idukki, Kerala.

 

 

Spiders serve an important ecological role in the ecosystem functioning as they are predatory in nature and feed on several other insects and even small vertebrates. Spiders are also considered as indicators of the health of the ecosystem (Mathew et al. 2009). A world without spiders would have serious problems affecting the whole food chain and cause an imbalance in the ecosystem; however, their study has always remained neglected. And there exist lots of misunderstanding about this most ubiquitous and diverse groups of organisms. All the spiders are regarded as poisonous creatures, and the general perception about them among the people are negative. But the fact is that very few spiders are actually poisonous and harmful to human beings (Mathew et al. 2009). However, the services these creature do to mankind by way of controlling pest species have been well documented (Riechert & Lockley 1984; Tanaka 1989; Bishop & Riechert 1990). Being a less charismatic species and the scarcity of biologists studying spiders, studies on the spiders of India in general and Western Ghats in particular remain scant. One of the earliest taxonomical documentations of the spider diversity of the country was by Pocock (1895, 1899, 1900). The important studies on spider diversity of the Western Ghats were by Hirst (1909), Gravely (1915, 1935), Sherriff (1919, 1920 a,b,c), Sinha (1951), Subramanian (1955), Smith (2004), and Sugumaran et al. (2005).

Some of the recent published work on spider diversity of the Western Ghats are as follows: Sudhikumar et al. (2005a), reported 94 species from the Kuttanad rice ecosystem, central Kerala Sudhikumar et al. (2005b), also reported 72 species from Mannavan Shola, which is part of Anamudi Shola National Park. Sebastian et al. (2005) reported 51 species from Mangalavanam Bird Sanctuary, while Jose et al. (2008) documented 147 species from Parambikulam Tiger Reserve, all from the Kerala part of the Western Ghats, except Kuttanad and Magalavanam which are coastal wetlands in central Kerala. Adarsh & Nameer (2015) reported 86 species of spiders from the Kerala Agricultural University campus, Thrissur, Kerala.

 

 

Study Area

Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary is located 18km north of Marayoor in the Marayoor and Kanthalloor Panchayaths of Devikulam Taluk in the Idukki District of Kerala State (Fig. 1). It is located between 10015’–10021’N and 7705’–77016’E and has a total area of 90.44km². The Munnar- Udumalpet road, SH-17 passes through the Sanctuary for 16km and divides it into nearly equal portions. It is contiguous with Eravikulam National Park to the South and Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary is to the north. It forms an integral part of the 1,187km2 block of protected forests in the Anamalai Hills, Western Ghats.

The terrain is undulating with hills and hillocks of varying heights. The altitude ranges from 400–2372 m. The sanctuary is situated in the rain shadow region and hence the area experiences a prolonged hot/dry season and fewer rainy days. The Chinnar plains are generally hot, but the higher altitudes are cool. The major rainfall season is during the north-east monsoons occurring from October to December. The rainy days in a year range from between 30–40 days which account for about 300–500 mm rainfall in Chinnar. But the higher altitudes areas like Olikkudy and Mangappara receive rain during both the north-east and south-west monsoons with comparatively much higher rainfall. The recorded lowest temperature is 120C and the highest is 380C.

The vegetation shows an entire spectrum ranging from temperate shola to dry scrub of the arid plains. The vegetation of the sanctuary can be broadly classified into the following types according to Champion & Seth (1968). They are southern tropical thorn forest (scrub jungle), southern dry mixed deciduous forest (dry deciduous forest), southern moist mixed deciduous forest (moist deciduous forest), tropical riparian fringing forest (riparian forest), southern montane wet temperate forest (montane shola forest) and southern montane wet grassland (grasslands).

 

 

Methods

The study was conducted from October to November 2012. Bushes, tree trunks, ferns, forest floor, foliage and grasslands were all searched for spiders and collected by handpick method as suggested by Tikader (1987). The identification of spiders was done following Tikader (1970, 1977, 1980, 1982, 1987), Koh (1996), Murphy & Murphy (2000), Sebastian & Peter (2009). The checklist of the spiders of Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary is prepared and is presented in this paper. The taxonomy and nomenclature followed is as per the world spider catalogue (Platnick 2014).

 

 

 

 

Results and Discussion

Out of 1447 spiders recorded from India (Siliwal & Molur 2005, 2007), 101 species belonging to 65 genera of 29 families were recorded during the present study (Appendix 1). This accounts for 6.98% of the total species of spiders and 48.33% of the total spider families recorded in India. Stegodyphus sarasinorum (Image 10) was found to be the most abundant species followed by Hersilia savignyi (Image 16), Palpimanus gibbulus (Image 33), Cyclosa hexatuberculata (Image 2), Selenops radiates (Image 48), Heteropoda hampsoni (Image 49), Gnaphosa kailana (Image 13). The most speciose spider family of Chinnar was Lycosidae (11 species) followed by Araneidae (10), Salticidae (8 species), Tetragnathidae (8 species), Oxyopidae (6 species) and Theridiidae (6 species).

Out of the 101 species identified from Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, 34 species are endemic to India (Appendix 1). The spiders of Chinnar are spread across 65 genera, of which two are endemic to India. The endemic genera of spiders seen at Chinnar are Annandaliella and Neoheterophrictus (Image 65), and belonging to the family Theraphosidae.

The spiders of Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary can be divided into seven feeding guilds based on the foraging behavior (Uetz et al.1999). They are the orb weavers, stalkers, ground runners, foliage runners, sheet web builders, space web builders and ambushers. The dominant guild was of the ground runners with 26 species and is followed by orb weavers (23 species), stalkers (14 species), ambushers (13 species), space web builders (12 species), foliage runners (10 species) and sheet web builders (3 species) (Table 1, Fig. 2).

The present report of Latrodectus hasselti (Image 56) from Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary is the first record of the species from Kerala State. There are only very few reports on the occurrence of Latrodectus hasselti from India. It was first reported from Pune (Simon, 1897; Pocock, 1900), later by Daniel & Soman (1961) from Suriamal in northern Thana, Bombay, then from Vadodara (Baroda) by Siliwal & Kumar (2001) and finally by Kumar & Siliwal (2005) from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

A preliminary checklist on the spiders of the Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, Western Ghats is given in this paper. This is the first ever documentation of the spiders of Chinnar. However, this by no means is comprehensive and it only suggest the great diversity of the spider fauna of Chinnar and thus warranting more detailed and systematic exploration of the spiders of Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary and other protected areas too.

 

 

 

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