Biodiversity assessment of spiders in Singapore's central nature reserves

• Main Author: Ang, Joel Wei-Jie
• Other Authors: Surajit Bhattacharyya
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/48696
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This eight weeks survey from December to March, 2012, was a continuation to study the diversity of Singapore’s spider in the Central Nature Reserves during the monsoon season. A total of 1273 spiders were collected and used in the result analysis. Results of this survey were compared to the previous survey done at early season last year, and changes to the spider community structure were discussed. The survey was conducted using three sampling methods namely – Active Searching, Beating and Leaf Litter sifting and sorting. There were a total of six sites identified for surveying mainly the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, Nee Soon Swamp Forest and Eco-Links 1 – 4. Shannon-Wiener Index was used to calculate the species diversity at each sampling sites. The results revealed that Bukit Timah Nature Reserve had the highest species richness at 18.125±1.597 and diversity index at 2.372±0.134. All sampling sites except for E3 revealed good diversity index of above 2. A dendrogram was plotted using IBM SPSS Statistics 20 and revealed the close similarity between E1 and E2. Results of this study could serve as baseline data for long term biodiversity monitoring to guide our biodiversity conservation effort.