چكيده لاتين
Arthropods are known as the most successful and diverse animals on Earth. They also play a significant role in human life, including pollination, beekeeping, aquaculture, and so on. Unfortunately, due to many reasons such as habitat destruction, overexploitation, biological invasions, and climate change, biodiversity in our world has undergone changes, from which even spiders are not immune. Among all groups of spiders, spiders are of great importance due to their abundance and diversity. Since these animals are identified as biological controllers for pest control, various studies have been conducted in recent years to investigate their diet. In this study, we investigated the diet of two different spider species to study the biodiversity of arthropods in pomegranate orchards in Shahreza city and also to study the relationship between these spiders and pomegranate tree pests. For this purpose, we used the DNA metabarcoding technique. After DNA extraction from the spider gut and sequencing, a total of 496 Operational Taxonomic Units were identified. In order to more accurately identify the species, we limited ourselves to examining sequences with a similarity of over 98% to the gene bank, which comprised approximately 11% of the total Operational Taxonomic Units. The orders identified in the diet of these two spider species were Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, Araneae, Thysanoptera, Neuroptera, Pseudoscorpiones, Poduromorpha, Acari, Ephemeroptera, Phasmatodea, Psocoptera, Isopoda and Orthoptera. Out of the 56 identified species, 10 were not previously reported from Iran. Also, one of the identified species was reported as an important pest of pomegranate trees.
