Abstract

Spiders have been the most critical organisms in the diversity of different terrestrial ecosystems. Spiders are generalist predators and the quality of feeding on different insect pests in the agroecosystem make them biological control agents of insect pests in the agroecosystems. Agroecosystems are not well for maintaining the diversity of organisms like insects and arachnids, as they are disturbed time to time. Cultivation practices in the agroecosystems make them vulnerable for decreasing the diversity in the ecosystems. The use of pesticides and the effect of pesticides on human health is an urge for using Integrated pest management systems (IPM). We investigated the agroecosystems of Umarkhed, the diverse agroecosystems and allied area responsible for the distribution of different spider families in the particular ecosystems. Collections were done in agricultural area near Painganga river and Marsul dam of Umarkhed. Survey was conducted from October 2022 to March 2023 and found that the most disturbed agroecosystems show less diversity but the diversity of spiders was more in non-disturbed farms such as citrus and sapodilla. 67 individuals belonging to 14 species and 7 families were collected, studied and identified.

Description