Abstract
Net-casting spiders (Deinopidae) comprise a charismatic family with an enigmatic evolutionary history. There are 67 described species of deinopids, placed among three genera, Deinopis, Menneus, and Asianopis, that are distributed globally throughout the tropics and subtropics. Deinopis and Asianopis, the ogre-faced spiders, are best known for their giant light-capturing posterior median eyes (PME), whereas Menneus does not have enlarged PMEs. Molecular phylogenetic studies have revealed discordance between morphology and molecular data. We employed a character-rich ultra-conserved element (UCE) dataset and a taxon-rich cytochrome-oxidase I (COI) dataset to reconstruct a genus-level phylogeny of Deinopidae, aiming to investigate the group’s historical biogeography, and examine PME size evolution. Although the phylogenetic results support the monophyly of Menneus and the single reduction of PME size in deinopids, these data also show that Deinopis is not monophyletic. Consequently, we formally transfer 24 Deinopis species to Asianopis; the transfers comprise all of the African, Australian, South Pacific, and a subset of Central American and Mexican species. Following the divergence of Eastern and Western deinopids in the Cretaceous, Deinopis/Asianopis dispersed from Africa, through Asia and into Australia with its biogeographic history reflecting separation of Western Gondwana as well as long-distance dispersal events.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 17769 |
| Pages (from-to) | 17769 |
| Journal | Scientific Reports |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 22 Oct 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information: This article was funded by The John Wheeler Graduate Student Research and Development Award and Evert and Marion Schlinger Foundation. Funding Information: We would like to acknowledge the many people who have contributed ideas. We thank Jay Stafstrom for sharing his expertise on spider vision and for thoughtful discussions on deinopid ecology. We thank Lauren Esposito for assisting in securing permits and collecting specimens as part of the Caribbean Island Biogeography (CARBIO) project. We thank Lacie Newton for her help with the molecular work. We are especially grateful to the volunteers who helped collect Australian deinopids, including Michael Doe and Adam Fletcher of Project Maratus , Jeremy Jones, Nick Lambert, Matt Elmer, Matthew Hourston, and Robert Whyte, and for sharing their knowledge on Australian spiders. We thank the Australian landowners who gave us permission to collect spiders on their property and for hosting us. We thank Mariella Herberstein, George Binns, and Jonas Wolff for assisting with the Australian collections. We thank Dave Barrington and Greta Binford for their discussions on biogeography and evolution. Finally, we appreciate the feedback from two anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s).Other keywords
- Animals
- Australia
- Bayes Theorem
- Cytochromes
- Evolution, Molecular
- Oxidoreductases
- Phylogeny
- Spiders