Spinning a new web in spider systematics: progress towards the phylogeny of Araneae

MIQUEL A. ARNEDO; SURESH BENJAMIN; JASON BOND; JONATHAN CODDINGTON; PABLO A. GOLOBOFF; CRISTIAN J. GRISMADO; CHARLES GRISWOLD; CHERYL HAYASHI; MARSHAL HEDIN; GUSTAVO HORMIGA; WAYNE MADDISON; JEREMY MILLER; NORMAN PLATNICK; DAVE PENNEY; LORENZO PRENDINI; MARTÍN J. RAMÍREZ; NIKOLAJ SCHARFF; DIANA SILVA; PETRA SIERWALD; COR VINK; WARD WHEELER

São Pedro, SP Brasil

Congreso; XVII International Congress of Arachnology; 2007

International Society of Arachnology

This poster will present preliminary results of the U.S. National Science Foundation-funded project “Assembling the Tree of Life: Phylogeny of Spiders” based on analysis of nucleotide sequences.  The aim of this project is to combine DNA sequence data with morphological and behavioral characters to infer the phylogenetic relationships of the families of Araneae.  The study is based on a taxonomic sample that includes more than 500 spider genera plus 18 genera of Amblypygi, Uropygi, Palpigradi and Schizomida.  The analysis presented includes more than 500 terminals with representatives of 104 of the 108 spider families and is the largest molecular dataset compiled for spiders to date.  The sequence data, more than 6,100 bp, include both mitochondrial (COI, 12S rDNA and 16S rDNA) and nuclear (28S rDNA, 18S rDNA and Histone H3) markers.