Phylogeny and biogeography of the mite harvestmen (Arachnida : Opiliones : Cyphophthalmi) of Queensland, Australia, with a description of six new species from the rainforests of the Wet Tropics

Abstract

The Wet Tropics of Queensland, Australia, represent the largest remaining fragment of vast rainforests that once covered the entire continent. Over the past few decades the Wet Tropics bioregion has received much attention from biologists interested in the effect of climate change on diversity and distribution of rainforest animals. However, most such studies have focused on vertebrates, and despite considerable interest in the biota of the area, the diversity of many of Wet Tropics invertebrate taxa remains poorly known. Here we describe six new species of mite harvestman from the area, identified using a combination of morphological and molecular data. Our study represents the first detailed phylogenetic study of the genus Austropurcellia, and provides insight into the historical biogeography of these dispersal-limited arachnids.

Historical refugia have shaped biogeographical patterns of species richness and phylogenetic diversity in mite harvestmen (Arachnida, Opiliones, Cyphophthalmi) endemic to the Australian Wet Tropics

“…Details of key anatomical characters and SEM methodology followed Boyer et al . (). Collections of female and juvenile mite harvestmen are not identifiable to species as only males bear species‐specific morphological characters.…”

“…c . 95%) of the Austropurcellia species in the Wet Tropics (Boyer et al ., ; Popkin‐Hall & Boyer, ; Boyer & Reuter, , and one manuscript currently submitted). Consultation with Queensland entomologist Geoff Monteith, who led QM leaf‐litter arthropod surveys for multiple decades and continues to serve as the focal contact for entomologists visiting Northern Queensland, has bolstered our confidence that our current survey does not exclude significant areas that might include unknown diversity, and that it accurately represents the relative diversity of subregions.…”

“…We used data from two mitochondrial loci, COI (789 bp) and 12S (407 bp); methods for DNA extraction and PCR followed Boyer et al . (). Models for sequence evolution were chosen in jModelTest (Posada, ).…”

“…Australia is home to two genera of mite harvestmen from the Gondwanan family Pettalidae Shear, 1980, one endemic to Western Australia and the other endemic to Queensland. Each of these genera is strongly supported as monophyletic in all analyses of molecular data, although they are likely not sister taxa (Boyer & Giribet, , ; Giribet et al ., ; Boyer et al ., ). The Queensland genus Austropurcellia Juberthie 1988 is an ancient lineage, estimated to have originated during the Cretaceous (Giribet et al ., ).…”

A stable phylogenomic classification of Travunioidea (Arachnida, Opiliones, Laniatores) based on sequence capture of ultraconserved elements

“…Previous molecular phylogenetic studies on harvestmen with these biological characteristics have shown compelling biogeographic patterns (e.g., Boyer et al 2007, Thomas and Hedin 2008, Giribet et al 2011, Schönhofer et al 2015, Boyer et al 2015). The Travunioidea have a temperate Laurasian distribution with species found in eastern Asia, eastern and western North America, and central Europe, with notable absences from central Asia (Figure 2).…”