First report of the spider genus Desis (Araneae, Desidae) from China, with description of a new species

Abstract

The spider genus Desis Walckenaer, 1837 is the type genus of the spider family Desidae Pocock, 1895. Desis spiders hide in silk sacs between rocks or shells during high tide and forage during low tide (Baehr et al. 2017). Four Desis species have been recorded from Asia: Desis gardineri Pocock, 1904 (India), Desis inermis Gravely, 1927 (India), Desis japonica Yaginuma, 1956 (Japan) and Desis martensi L. Koch, 1872 (Malaysia) (World Spider Catalog 2020). Until now, only one species of the family Desidae, Badumna tangae Zhu, Zhang & Yang, 2006, has been reported from China (Zhu et al. 2006). Here, we describe a new species of Desis and report the genus from China for the first time.

The complete mitochondrial genome of the intertidal spider (Desis jiaxiangi) provides novel insights into the adaptive evolution of the mitogenome and the evolution of spiders

“…Given the critical role played by mitochondria in aerobic respiration and the environment of aquatic spiders, here we explore the adaptive evolution of spider mitogenomes and phylogenetic relationships in spiders. Taking advantage of new sequencing technologies and rapid development in bioinformatics, we sequenced and assembled the complete mitogenome of Desis jiaxiangi Lin, Li & Chen, 2020 from Hainan Island, China [23,24]. To explore the evolution of aquatic spiders, we combined data from all 45 publicly available spider mitogenomes, including that of the fully freshwater Argyroneta aquatica.…”