A molecular phylogenetic approach to the New Zealand species of Enantiobuninae (Opiliones : Eupnoi : Neopilionidae)

Abstract

Members of the New Zealand Enantiobuninae constitute some of the most charismatic soil arthropods of the archipelago, and a striking example of sexual dimorphism, with nondescript females but colourful males boasting exaggerated chelicerae many times longer than their bodies. The genera Forsteropsalis and Pantopsalis recently underwent revision, but many questions remained about the validity of species designations owing to historical issues of characters of dubious taxonomic value, female specimens designated as holotypes despite the males holding all the diagnostic characters, and the suspected presence of more than one male form within some species. We present the first phylogeny based on molecular data for the New Zealand species in the genera Forsteropsalis, Pantopsalis and Mangatangi, and comment on the taxonomic implications of our results, including the diagnostic viability of important morphological characters. Our analyses reject the monophyly of Neopilionidae and Forsteropsalis, but support the monophyly of Pantopsalis. Finally, we comment on the taxonomic implications of the results, including the diagnostic validity of morphological characters traditionally used on the groups.

A molecular phylogeny of the temperate Gondwanan family Pettalidae (Arachnida, Opiliones, Cyphophthalmi) and the limits of taxonomic sampling

“…A pattern of two ancient South African lineages not being sister taxa, and one being sister group to a Chilean clade, is also found in Peripatopsidae (Onychophora) (Murienne et al ., ), where the South African genus Peripatopsis is closest to the Chilean Metaperipatus , while the other South African genus, Opisthopatus , is sister group to the previous clade, and thought to be related to another Chilean genus, Paropisthopatus (Reid, ). Also interesting is the early split between South Africa and the rest of the southern Gondwanan landmasses in the family Neopilionidae (Arachnida, Opiliones) (Vélez, Fernández & Giribet, ), although in this case sampling in South America and South Africa was not optimal and no molecular dating was performed to test the temporal correspondence in tree topology with landmass history. The early split between Africa and other parts of Gondwana is seen also in migid trap‐door spiders (Griswold & Ledford, ) and was probably first demonstrated by Brundin () in his phylogeny of austral chironomid midges.…”

Sequence capture phylogenomics of historical ethanol‐preserved museum specimens: Unlocking the rest of the vault

“…In geneious , local nucleotide blast searches were conducted for all assemblies compared to sequences of each gene derived from confamilial/congeneric samples available on GenBank from previously published studies. As the utility of UCE‐derived mitochondrial genomes and COI datasets have been demonstrated in previous studies (Derkarabetian, Castillo, Koo, Ovchinnikov, & Hedin, ; do Amaral et al, ; Hedin, Derkarabetian, Blair, et al, ; Zarza et al, ), we explored the phylogenetic utility of 28S + 18S rRNA derived from samples included in this study with published data derived from multiple studies (Boyer & Giribet, ; Boyer, Karaman, & Giribet, ; Burns, Hedin, & Shultz, ; Giribet et al, ; Hedin, Tsurusaki, Macías‐Ordóñez, & Shultz, ; Vélez, Fernández, & Giribet, ). A phylogeny was reconstructed with a matrix partitioned by locus using RAxML version 8 as described above.…”

“…For both datasets, all individual loci were manually inspected in geneious (Kearse et al, 2012) to adjust obvious alignment errors and remove any nonorthologous sequences. To assess nonorthology, gene trees were reconstructed for all individual locus alignments with raxml version 8 (Stamatakis, 2014) (Boyer & Giribet, 2007;Boyer, Karaman, & Giribet, 2005;Burns, Hedin, & Shultz, 2012;Giribet et al, 2010;Hedin, Tsurusaki, Macías-Ordóñez, & Shultz, 2012;Vélez, Fernández, & Giribet, 2014).…”

The Opiliones Tree of Life: shedding light on harvestmen relationships through transcriptomics

“…Recently a proposal for a Dyspnoi phylogeny, not based on data analyses, has been presented (Schönhofer, 2013). In addition, dozens of papers have explored the relationships of individual families or groups of closely related species (for some recent examples, see Schönhofer et al, 2013; Derkarabetian and Hedin, 2014; Pinto-da-Rocha et al, 2014; Vélez et al, 2014; Boyer et al, 2015; Schönhofer et al, 2015; Giribet et al, 2016; Richart et al, 2016). We can thus say that the phylogenetic understanding of Opiliones is on the right track, but some key nodes are yet to be resolved with confidence.…”

“…For example, within Cyphophthalmi, the relationships among its six families, and even the monophyly of Sironidae, remain unsettled (Giribet et al, 2012a). Relationships within Eupnoi—the group that includes the true “daddy-long-legs”—are barely explored from a molecular perspective (see Hedin et al, 2012b; Vélez et al, 2014; Groh and Giribet, 2015), and no study has included all the relevant diversity. Resolution within these clades is poorly understood, with the exception of the deepest division between Caddoidea and Phalangioidea (Groh and Giribet, 2015).…”