81 yrs after first record, rare velvet spider seen in Melghat
Satpuda Foundation
81 yrs after first record, rare velvet spider seen in Melghat
Vijay PinjarkarVijay Pinjarkar | Nov 25, 2015, 03.30 AM IST
Nagpur: At a time when there is lot of talk about tigers, a rare genus of spider has been rediscovered after 81 years at Muthawa Community Centre in Melghat Tiger Reserve (MTR) in Amravati district. "The spider that has been found is also known as social or velvet spider. In India, first record of the spider (stegodyphus pacificus) is from Chennai in 1934," says GN Vankhede, an expert and former head of the zoology department, Amravati University.
Vankhede said there was a controversy about this spider as one of the researchers identified it wrongly as Semadohansis. The social spider, which lives in bushes and trees, was recorded at Muthawa Centre, established in 2006 by Nature Conservation Society, Amravati (NCSA) to promote wildlife research, conservation and education.
Kishor Rithe, in charge of Muthawa centre, said biodiversity was rich at the centre. It is situated on 20-acre land and there is also a private sanctuary on four acres. The land was barren 10 years ago. The velvet spider was recorded by researcher from Egypt Hisham K El-Hennawy during the short field study at the wild habitat conserved at the Muthawa. The study tour to Muthawa was part of the international conference of third Asian Society of Arachnology in Amravati. The first conference was held in Thailand and second in China.
Vankhede said the spider was earlier recorded in Jordan and Iran. It was also found in Peshawar in Pakistan in 1984. "It was sheer coincidence that El-Hennawy presented research paper on same spider and it was later found in Muthawa," he added. The international workshop on spiders was organized with the initiative of Vankhede, who has already identified about 1,200 species of spiders in Melghat. There are 39,490 spider species in the world.
Around 90 delegates including 40 foreign researchers visited the community centre in Melghat. Hirotsugu Ono, former president of Asian Society of Arachnology (ASA), and Koh, newly elected president of ASA, and GN Vankhede congratulated Hennawy for the finding. Rithe, who is also member of Maharashtra State Biodiversity Board (MSBB), had in the board meeting on November 9, raised the issue of documenting spider species in Melghat. "This documentation is very essential," he stressed.
Former Member, Standing Committee of National Board for Wildlife,
Former Member, Maharashtra state Board for Wildlife,
Member, Maharashtra state Bio-diversity Board.
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