A completely resolved phylogenetic tree of British spiders (Arachnida: Araneae)

Abstract

The recent accumulation of increasingly densely sampled phylogenetic analyses of spiders has greatly advanced our understanding of evolutionary relationships within this group. Here, this diverse literature is reviewed and combined with earlier morphological analyses in an attempt to reconstruct the first fully resolved phylogeny for the spider fauna of the British Isles. The resulting tree highlights parts of the group where data are still too limited for a confident assessment of relationships, proposes a number of deviations from previously suggested phylogenetic hypotheses, and can serve as a framework for evolutionary and ecological interpretations of the biology of British spiders, as well as a starting point for future studies on a larger geographical scale.

Three new species of the primitively segmented spider genus Songthela (Mesothelae, Liphistiidae, Heptathelinae) from Hunan Province, China

“…Recently, Li (2022) elevated the two subfamilies, Liphistiinae and Heptathelinae, to family ranks, Liphistiidae and Heptathelidae, but provided no additional justification for the taxonomic classification change. Breitling (2022) argued against Li's two-family classification system based on nomenclature, morphology, molecular data and fossils, and recommended to maintain a single family Liphistiidae. We agree with Breitling's argumentation, and follow the classification that we have previously proposed (Xu et al 2015a(Xu et al , b, 2021, which supports two subfamilies in the family Liphistiidae because all members of Liphistiidae share the same plesiomorphic traits mentioned above, although the members of Liphistiinae have signal lines around their burrow entrances, which are often used as one of the diagnostic characters to separate Liphistiinae from Heptathelinae.…”