Spiders have an important role in the agroecosystems. They are effective in suppressing the pest populations as biological controllers. This study aimed to study the abundance, temporal distribution and diversity of spiders in an agriculture research site at Jazirat Shandweel, Sohag District, Sohag Governorate, Egypt. The sampling was carried out monthly from January to December 2016 using the beating and hand picking methods. One thousand, seven hundred and twenty-nine individuals were identified and classified into fifteen species belonging to fifteen genera and twelve families.
The temporal variations in spider families revealed that; four families; Theridiidae, Eutichuridae, Salticidae and Linyphiidae, were the most abundant. Spider's community was classified into two categories; hunting spiders and the web-building ones. The hunting spiders were more abundant than the web building ones. The most species-rich family was Salticidae, while the most individuals-rich family was Theridiidae. The Shannon index exhibits the monthly variation in spider diversity that ranged between 0.83 and 2.28. The evenness index values were high and ranged between 0.4 and 0.95 revealing absence of dominance of a single species.