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103
DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE
REPORTS
|
No. 3, July 2, 2016
20
th
International Congress of Arachnology
complex features. These findings suggest the potential for
alternative splicing to have a critical role in the mainte-
nance and operation of venom and silk glands.
Keywords: venom, silk, gene expression, transcriptome,
alternative splicing,
Parasteatoda
Oral presentation
Phylogenetic relationships of the Australian
open-holed trapdoor spiders (Nemesiidae:
Anaminae): a multi-locus molecular analy-
sis resolves generic classification
Mark S. Harvey
1,2
, Mark A. Castalanelli
1
, Mia J. Hillyer
1
,
Barbara York Main
2
, Robert J. Raven
3
, Michael G. Rix
4,3
,
Cor J. Vink
5
and Joel A. Huey
1,2
1
Department of Terrestrial Zoology, Western Austra-
lian Museum, Locked Bag 49, Welshpool DC, Western
Australia 6986, Australia;
2
School of Animal Biology,
University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western
Australia 6009, Australia;
3
Queensland Museum, PO
Box 3300, South Brisbane, Queensland 4101, Aus-
tralia.
4
Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology
and Biodiversity, School of Biological Sciences, The
University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia
5005, Australia;
5
Canterbury Museum, Rolleston
Avenue, Christchurch 8013, New Zealand.
mark.harvey@museum.wa.gov.auThe spiders of the mygalomorph family Nemesiidae occur
in many different parts of the world. Past morphological
and molecular studies suggest the family is not monophy-
letic and that the subfamily classification is unstable. The
most diverse nemesiid group in the Australasian region,
the subfamily Anaminae, is currently represented by 12
valid genera, but the status of some, such as
Chenistonia
,
has vacillated in different taxonomic treatments. Using
a wide selection of specimens from Australia and New
Zealand, we evaluate the relationships of the Australasian
members of Anaminae using two different analyses.
The first added several new 18S and 28S ribosomal RNA
and Elongation Factor 1 gamma (EF-1ɣ) sequences to a
previously published dataset; the resulting tree showed
that most Australasian Anaminae formed a monophyletic
group, but that the genus
Stanwellia
failed to group with
this clade. The second analysis recovered three major
clades using mitochondrial (12S and 16S ribosomal RNA,
and CO1 and nuclear (18S and 28S ribosomal RNA, and
Histone 3 sequence data. The first clade comprised the
taxa previously included in the Teylini (
Teyl, Pseudoteyl
and
Namea
), as well as
Merredinia
and
Chenistonia
.
The second clade included species of
Kwonkan
,
Swolnpes
and
Yilgarnia
, as well as the anomalous
Aname turrig-
era
. The third clade comprised the highly diverse genus
Aname and a new genus. The results of the study are used
to stabilize the generic classification. The New Zealand
exemplars of
Stanwellia
analyzed for this study are nested
deeply within the taxa from Australia, strongly suggesting
that their presence in New Zealand is the result of trans-
oceanic dispersal, not continental vicariance.
Keywords: systematics, molecular phylogenetics, bioge-
ography, generic relationships, Gondwana
Poster presentation
The genus
Chenistonia
(Mygalomorphae:
Nemesiidae) in southern Australia and
revalidation of the genus
Proshermacha
Simon, 1908
Mark S. Harvey, Joel Huey, Mia Hillyer, Julianne Waldock#
Department of Terrestrial Zoology, Western Australian
Museum, Locked Bag 49, Welshpool Delivery Centre,
Western Australia, W.A. 6986, Australia. #Not an
author of the work
julianne.waldock@museum.wa.gov.auRecent molecular investigations of the mygalomorph family
Nemesiidae in Western Australia have clarified the generic
status of a number of known species including species of
Aname
L. Koch, 1872 and
Chenistonia
Hogg, 1901. The limits
and composition of the genus
Chenistonia
has changed over
the past three decades, either as a synonym of
Aname
, or as
a distinct genus. A multi-gene analysis of the relationships of
a wide range of Australasian nemesiids has clarified the status
of
Chenistonia
which is found to be very distinct from Aname.
Furthermore, the sister group to true
Chenistonia
–those
species with a short embolus on the male pedipalp–is a group
of species with a long embolus that deserves to be recognized
at the generic level, for which the name
Proshermacha