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109
DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE
REPORTS
|
No. 3, July 2, 2016
20
th
International Congress of Arachnology
or expert-knowledge lists, containing only a few species.
Assessors used different criteria and methods for their
assessments, which make a direct comparison between
threat categories of species difficult. While in an ideal
scenario, we would know the exact degree a given species
is threatened, this information is only available for a few
well-known taxa, mainly vertebrates, thus, IUCN criteria
are hardly applicable to invertebrates such as spiders.
Nevertheless, there is a need to classify invertebrates
with simple, taxon-specific criteria, which are applicable
for all species in every country. Here we analyse in a
top-down approach criteria which have been used to
establish some national red lists of spiders for all Euro-
pean species. We tested traits against IUCN categories
of red listed species to analyse for significant influence.
Species with narrow distribution (endemics), preferred
occurrence in rare or threatened habitats such as
wetlands, xeric habitats, caves or rocky habitats are sig-
nificantly more often assessed to be threatened, whereas
body size and hunting manner had no influence on
vulnerability. With these results, trait-based criteria have
been suggested to nationally assess all European spider
species. We propose complete national species red lists
for all 64 European countries and regions, which can be
adapted, verified and easier compared with each other.
Keywords: conservation, extinction, threatened species,
risk assessment, endemism, distribution, habitat
Student - poster presentation
A test of the utility of venom expressed
genes for reconstructing taxonomic rela-
tionships using Haplogyne spiders
*Sophia Horigan
1
, Pam Zobel-Thropp
1
, Sasha Bishop
1
,
Jeremy McWilliams
2
, Nick Budak
2
, Rishi Javia
2
, Greta
Binford
1
1
Department of Biology, Lewis & Clark College, Port-
land, OR, USA;
2
Watzek Library Digital Initiatives,
Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR USA
shorigan@lclark.eduHaplogyne spiders, including infamous members of the
genus
Loxosceles
(brown recluse) and relatives, are a
diverse set of families with a variety of venom toxins that
are of medical and pharmaceutical interest. The currently
accepted phylogeny of Haplogynes is largely based on mor-
phological characteristics, and has not been scrutinized
with molecular data. Next-generation sequencing (NGS)
provides cost-effective access to large amounts of data
that can be used to revisit phylogenetic hypotheses based
on morphology and/or molecular datasets with few genes.
This project is an undergraduate thesis that is utilizing
NGS (Illumina 3000) venom gland and whole body tran-
scriptomes for 11 Haplogyne species to provide a molecular
test of the family relationships proposed by morphological
data, with a concentration on generic level relationships
in the scytodoid superfamily. A secondary goal is to test the
phylogenetic utility of venom-expressed genes by analyz-
ing the degree of congruence between phylogenies created
with datasets including only genes that code for venom
proteins, datasets that include only non-venom genes,
and all molecular data. With a few intriguing exceptions,
phylogenies including all sequences resolve relationships
that are largely congruent with relationships supported
by morphology. Further analyses will test whether the
relationships supported with the full dataset are congruent
with those supported by analyses of the subset of the data
that are in gene families that include representatives that
are venom expressed, and subsets that are gene families
that are not venom-expressed. These analyses improve
understanding of relationships within Haplogynes and test
the utility of venom genes in resolving relationships.
Keywords: next-generation sequencing (NGS), haplogy-
nes, phylogenomics
Oral Presentation
A phylogenomic approach to resolve the
relationships among the main lineages of
araneoid spiders
Gustavo Hormiga
1
, Rosa Fernández
2
, Robert Kallal
1
,
Jesús A. Ballesteros
1
, Miquel Arnedo
3
, Dimitar Dimitrov
4
,
Gonzalo Giribet
2
1
Department of Biological Sciences, The George Wash-
ington University, Washington DC, USA;
2
Museum of
Comparative Zoology & Department of Organismic
and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University,