Predation potential of hunting and web-building spiders on rice pests of Indian subcontinent
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Predation potential of hunting and web-building spiders on rice pests of Indian subcontinent Abhinav Mishra 1
&
Bhupendra Kumar 1
&
Neelkamal Rastogi 1
Received: 7 March 2020 / Revised: 30 August 2020 / Accepted: 22 September 2020 # African Association of Insect Scientists 2020
Abstract The present study investigated the predation attributes of hunting and web-building spiders of Indian subcontinent against ricepests, under in-vitro conditions. Field observations revealed that the lynx spider, Oxyopes javanus and the ground-dwelling wolfspider, Pardosa sumatrana were the most abundant arboreal hunting spiders, while Neoscona theisi and Tetragnatha javana, were the most abundant arboreal web-making spiders, throughout the crop growing season. Laboratory results showed that the prey consumption rates and growth rates of spiders were highest on abundant prey, but the conversion efficiencies were highest on scarce prey. Results identified the highest consumption and growth rates for O. javanus, while conversion efficiencies were highest for N. theisi. The four spider species under study consumed higher number of leafhoppers and lepidopteron adult stage pests in comparison to Leptocorisa bugs and grasshopper nymphs. We, therefore, suggest that the predatory impacts of spiders may be strongly influenced by their species-specific feeding and behavioural attributes, and the anti-predation features of the potential prey. Keywords Hunting and web-building spiders . Generalist predators . Biological control
Introduction Arthropods represent one of the most successful taxa on earth with estimates for global species richness approaching 10 million (Mora et al. 2011). However, a rapid decline in insects has been recently reported in a global review (Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys 2019). It is therefore of utmost necessity that studies are focused on the ecological role of arthropods particularly on those species which are successful and therefore abundant and dominant in ecosystems. Generalist predators, such as spiders (Araneae) constitute not only the most diversified group of true predators in terms of species (Coddington and Levi 1991) but are also among the most abundant voracious predators in terrestrial ecosystems across the world (Pekár and Toft 2015). The global annual prey consumption rate of spider community is estimated to be in the range of 400–800 million metric tons (Nyffeler and Birkhofer 2017). Hence, spider assemblages in general numerically and behaviourally dominant
* Neelkamal Rastogi [email protected] 1
Department of Zoology, Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, U.P 221 005, India
species in particular, can play an important role in shaping community ecology (Klecka and Boukal 2013). Many species of spiders abound in disturbed habitats such as annual cropping systems (Schmidt et al. 2005). Spiders have immense potential in suppressing economically important insect pests of crops (Joseph and Premila 2016; Michalko et al. 2019) due to a number of
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