Diversity and Habitat Distributions of Ground-surface Spiders (Araneae) in Kings Mountain National Military Park, South Carolina

Sarah D. Stellwagen^1,* and Joseph D. Culin^1,*

¹Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, 171 Poole Agricultural Center, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-0310. *Corresponding author.

Southeastern Naturalist, Volume 19, Issue 1 (2020): 128–151

Abstract
We surveyed ground-surface spider populations in Kings Mountain National Military Park, Blacksburg, SC, monthly from August 2009 through July 2010 using pitfall traps to collect spiders at 2 sites in each of 3 forest habitat types: riparian zones, dry forest areas, and ridgetop habitats. Of the 902 adult spiders collected, we identified 848 to species, representing 85 species in 22 families. Although each habitat type supported a unique set of species, each also shared species with the other habitat types. High Chao–Sorenson similarity values were seen in comparisons of both forest and ridgetop as well as forest and riparian habitats. We used the first 3 Hill numbers, species richness (0D), Shannon exponential (1D), and inverse Simpson (2D) indices, to compare diversity among habitat types. Species richness was significantly higher in the riparian compared to the ridgetop habitat, while both the Shannon exponential and inverse Simpson indices were significantly higher in the riparian habitat than in either the forest or ridgetop habitats, which did not differ from each other. Diversity was not significantly different between any pairs of sites within habitats with the exception of coverage-based species richness in the dry forest habitat. Within a habitat type, the 2 forest sites had the highest Chao–Sorenson similarity value, followed by the 2 ridgetop sites, with the 2 riparian sites being the least similar to each other.

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