Habitat fragmentation and arachnid diversity

The study investigates the spider fauna inhabiting Technopark and Karyavattom campuses of southern Kerala. Diversity analysis has been done by the use of various indices (dominance richness and evenness). A significant diversity of spiders shows their comparatively higher degree of adaptability even though the region is disturbed with various anthropogenic activities. Categorization of the spider fauna obtained based on mobility had shown the abundance of the moderately mobile spider. It is hard for the highly mobile spiders to survive in a highly fragmented areas also this becomes uninhabitable for least mobile spiders due to their restricted microhabitats. The Species-Area relation was also recorded. DNA barcoding of Phintella vittata was done and the respective sequence was compared with some of the available sequences of the congenerics obtained by nucleotide blast.