Morphological Taxonomy and Diversity Studies on Spiders in Basrah-Iraq

Spiders play a good role in ecosystem, most of them are predators on distractive insects, such ecosystem has not been studied in Iraq, this study is the first investigation carried out. Results show that 36 species belong to 30 genera and 13 families, have been found in our area, one of them was confirmed as a new species in the world. All species have been described, drawing with camera Lucida, and photos. Also the diversity of spiders through different areas and throughout the year has been carried out, and the results of spatial similarity revealed. There were few stations which had high percentage of similarity, others not. The temporal similarity was high between February and March, while the low value of similarity was between August and November. The results of the effect of environmental factors on the spiders' community revealed the wind velocity and temperature degree had an inverse correlation on the number of spider individuals, while rain quantity and relative humidity had positive correlation on the number of individuals. The results also show there was positive correlation between the plant cover and the number of individuals.