Incorporating topological and age uncertainty into biogeographic inference in Neotropical sand spiders (Araneae: Sicarius)

IVAN L. F. MAGALHAES; ADALBERTO J. SANTOS; RAMÍREZ, M.J.

Virtual

Simposio; XXI Young Systematist's Forum; 2020

Natural History Museum

Event-based biogeographic methods, such as dispersal-extinction-cladogenesis, have become increasingly popular for attempting to reconstruct the biogeographic history of organisms. Such methods employ distributional data of sampled species and a dated phylogenetic tree to estimate ancestral distribution ranges. Because the input tree is often a single consensus tree, uncertainty in topology and age estimates are seldom taken into account. We explore the effect of incorporating this uncertainty in a biogeographic analysis of the 21 species of sand spiders (Araneae: Sicarius) from Neotropical xeric biomes, based on a ?total-evidence? phylogeny. Including uncertainty in ages gives insights into the age of colonization of the Galapagos Islands by this genus. Including topological uncertainty allows a more solid discussion on past connections among currently disjunct Neotropical dry forests. We argue that incorporating phylogenetic uncertainty in biogeographic inference is valuable, especially in the presence of rogue taxa or wide confidence intervals in age estimates.