TROGLOBITE BRAZILIAN HARVESTMEN (ARACHNIDA, OPILIONES, LANIATORES) EVIDENCE A 40 MY OF AN ANCIENT HISTORY OF WIDER GEOGRAFICAL DISTRIBUTION OF KIMULIDAE IN SOUTH AMERICA

SARA F. CECARELLI; MÁRCIO BERNARDINO DASILVA; BRUNO G. OLIVEIRA DO MONTE; MARIA ELINA BICHUETTE; ABEL PÉREZ GONZÁLEZ; DANIEL PROUD

Congreso; 35th Annual Meeting of the Willi Hennig Society and XII Reunión Argentina de Cladística y Biogeografia; 2016

Willi Hennig Society

Recently, a troglomorphic harvestmen species was discovered living in a Brazilian cave in a xerophitic area of Minas Gerais State. The species has a highly modified external morphology obscuring the familial allocation, and the genital morphology suggested that it belonged in the genus Tegipiolus. This genus was recently placed in Kimulidae based on morphology but this hypothesis was never tested in a phylogenetic framework. DNA was extracted from a fresh specimen of the troglobitic species plus 17 other species belonging to the families Escadabiidae, Kimulidae and Zalmoxidae. The DNA was then used to amplify and sequence four molecular markers (COI, H3a, 18S and 28S). Phylograms and chronograms for our focal taxon and selected outgroups were obtained through Bayesian inference (BI). A time-calibrated tree was constructed using BEAST. The phylogram lends high support (pp = 0.99) to the monophyly of Kimulidae, but the sister-group relationship is not well resolved and the escadabiid species arepolyphyletic. The maximum clade credibility tree from BEAST, on the other hand, places Kimulidae as sister to a monophyletic Escadabiidae, albeit without valid nodal support. Within the family Kimulidae, Relictopiolus galadriel is sister to the genus Tegipiolus (T. pachypus) with the most recent common ancestor of the two taxa estimated to have diverged during the Paleogene, 40 million years ago (95% HPD: 19-64) probably when the surrounding environment of the cave was occupied by a humid forest.