Jumping Spiders (Araneae: Salticidae) of Satlasana Taluka

Family Salticidae is most species rich group of order Araneae. Jumping spiders are taxonomically diverse, present everywhere in huge abundance and diurnal. As their names simply, jumping spiders are also quick and agile jumpers, and will do so both to escape potential predators and to capture small prey and regulating arthropod population. Spiders have important role in ecosystems but they have been largely ignored in conservational studies. This might be one of the reasons of poor knowledge on jumping spider of this area. The study on jumping spiders made in different habitats from Satlasna Taluka during October 2014 to December 2017. Specimen collections were conducted using visual search, litter sampling, sweep netting and hand picking methods from all the sites. One hundred eighty four specimens belong to 28 species and 17 genera were recorded. For the period of this study certain new genera documented for Gujarat such as Carrhotus sannio; Menemerus brachygnathus; M. fulvus; Phintella sp.; Siler semiglaucus and Thiania sp.