Ancient origins of the Mediterranean trap-door spiders of the family Ctenizidae (Araneae, Mygalomorphae)

Multilocus sequence data reveal dozens of putative cryptic species in a radiation of endemic Californian mygalomorph spiders (Araneae, Mygalomorphae, Nemesiidae)

“…Raven (1985) used morphol-60 ogy to revise taxonomy and contributed greatly to our understand-61 ing of higher-level mygalomorph phylogenetic relationships. 62 Recent phylogenetic studies using DNA sequence data have 63 recovered support for some previous morphology-based 64 hypotheses, but have also demonstrated the limitations of mor-65 phological data and revealed some surprising relationships 66 Bond et al, 2012;Starrett et al, 2013;67 Opatova et al, 2013;Opatova and Arnedo, 2014a). 68 In addition to improving our understanding of deeper phyloge-69 netic relationships, DNA sequence data have played a crucial role 70 in uncovering and recognizing species-level diversity in mygalo-71 morphs.…”

“…Mexico is home to Mexentypesa chia-97 pas (Raven, 1987) and at least one undescribed species (Hedin and 98 Bond, 2006 Chamberlin andIvie, 1939 (World Spider Catalog, 2015). 103 In his unpublished dissertation, Bentzien (1976) factor 1 c (EF-1c), nuclear loci that are widely used in phylogenetic 160 analyses of mygalomorphs Ayoub et al, 161 2007;Bond et al, 2012;Opatova et al, 2013). We also included Based on preliminary analyses of mitochondrial data and geo-178 graphic distribution, we collected nuclear data for forty individu-179 als.…”

Four new species of the trapdoor spider genus Conothele Thorell, 1878 from Mainland China and Laos (Araneae, Ctenizidae)

“…Recent phylogenetic studies have recovered neither the monophyly of Ctenizidae nor of Ctenizinae (Hedin and Bond 2006; Ayoub et al 2007; Bond et al 2012; Opatava et al 2013), even though Garrison et al (2016) recovered Cyclocosmia and Hebestatis as monophyletic. Most importantly, Cteniza , the type genus of the family, which is consistently supported as sister to the other Mediterranean genus Cyrtocarenum , is never recovered as closely related to any of the remaining genera of the family (Raven 1985; Decae 1996; Opatova 2013). Similarly, the genus Stasimopus never clusters with any other Ctenizidae genus (Hedin and Bond 2006).…”

“…The taxonomic status of Conothele has been a matter of debate. The genus is closely related to Ummidia , from which it only differs by characters of uncertain generic significance (Main 1957; Siliwal et al 2009; Opatova et al 2013), which has led some authors to consider Conothele as a junior synonym. However, the two genera show some differences in distribution and burrow architecture.…”

Trapdoor spiders of the genus Cyclocosmia Ausserer, 1871 from China and Vietnam (Araneae, Ctenizidae)

“…The mygalomorph family Ctenizidae is ancient, long-lived, regionally endemic and dispersal-limited, and thus is of long-standing and persistent conservation significance in many regions of the world (Zhu et al 2006; Opatova et al 2013, 2016). Ctenizids are widely distributed in east and southeast Asia, north and south America, the Mediterranean region, southern Africa and Australia (World Spider Catalog 2016).…”