engleski

Enlightening the dark: A phylogenetic framework for Dinaric cave-dwelling dysderid spiders

Caves are one of the last uncharted territories on Earth. The Dinaric karst in the Balkan peninsula is home to many of them, but despite of darkness and harsh conditions, life thrives there. Spiders of the family Dysderidae are among their most abundant and conspicuous inhabitants. Yet, we know very little about their biology, ecology, and evolutionary history. As a first step towards improving our knowledge on cave dysderids, we here present an explicit phylogenetic hypothesis of the group based on an extensive biotic survey of the region. Seven Dysderidae genera with 21 species are known in the Dinaric caves: Stalagtia and Folkia in the Harpacteinae subfamily, and Rhode, Stalita, Mesostalita, Parastalita and Stalitella in the Rhodinae. Almost all species show high level of cave adaptation and are narrow endemics. We used a target multi-locus approach based on 4 concatenated genes to infer a phylogeny, delimit species boundaries and estimate divergence time combining fossil and biogeographic node calibrations. We uncovered major overlooked diversity at both species and genera levels. Quantitative species delimitation methods confirmed the existence of many new species, and revealed high levels of cryptic diversity within Harpacteinae. All cave lineages showed a common pattern of long stem branches, which may hint at high levels of extinction during the history of these groups. We hypothesise that Miocene climatic changes may have played a crucial role in shaping the extant diversity of these cave-dwelling spiders. Finally, we reconstructed the biogeographic scenario for the diversification of the Dinaric dysderid fauna.

cave Dysderidae ; Dinarids ; phylogeny ; biogeography

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