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183
DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE
REPORTS
|
No. 3, July 2, 2016
in organic fields. However, the differences between these
two farming systems were not statistically significant.
Spider assemblages were also affected by vegetation and
landscape structure.
Keywords: spider assemblages, farmland, biodiversity,
agri-environmental scheme
Oral presentation
High phylogenetic utility of an ultracon-
served element probe set designed for
Arachnida
James Starrett
1#
, Shahan Derkarabetian
1,2#
, Brant C.
Faircloth
3
, Robert W. Bryson Jr.
4, 5
, John E. McCormack
5
,
Marshal Hedin
1
#equal contribution
1
Department of Biology, 5500 Campanile Drive, San
Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, USA;
2
Department of Biology, 900 University Avenue, Uni-
versity of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521,
USA;
3
Department of Biological Sciences and Museum
of Natural Science, Louisiana State University, Baton
Rouge, LA 70803, USA;
4
Department of Biology and
Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Uni-
versity of Washington, 4331 Memorial Way Northeast,
Seattle, WA 98195, USA;
5
Moore Laboratory of Zoology,
Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 90041, USA
jstarrett@mail.sdsu.eduArachnida is an ancient, diverse, and ecologically impor-
tant animal group that contains a number of species of
interest for medical and engineering applications. Yet,
many aspects of the arachnid tree of life remain unre-
solved, hindering comparative approaches to arachnid
biology. Despite considerable effort, biologists’ attempts
to resolve the arachnid phylogeny have been confounded
by limited and challenging morphological characters, as
well as a dearth in genetic resources. Here, we present a
genomic toolkit for arachnids featuring hundreds of con-
served DNA regions (ultraconserved elements or UCEs) to
allow targeted resequencing of any species in the arachnid
tree of life. We used recently developed capture probes
designed from conserved genomic regions of available
arachnid genomes and enriched a sampling of 32 diverse
arachnids. Sequence capture returned an average of 487
UCE loci for all species, with a range from 170 to 722. Phy-
logenetic analysis of these UCEs produced a highly resolved
arachnid tree with relationships largely consistent with
recent transcriptome-based phylogenies. We also tested
the phylogenetic informativeness of UCE probes within the
spider, scorpion, and harvestman orders, demonstrating
the utility of these markers at somewhat shallower taxo-
nomic scale, even down to the level of species differences.
This probe set will open the door to phylogenetic and
population genetic studies across the arachnid tree of life,
enabling systematics, species delimitation, species discov-
ery, and conservation of these diverse arthropods.
Keywords: phylogenomics, target-enrichment, species
delimitation, Araneae, Opiliones
Oral presentation
The effects of leg autotomy on the outcome of
predator-prey interactions in
Pardosa valens
Matthew M. Steffenson
1
, Chris A. Brown
2
1
Adams State University, 208 Edgemont Blvd Suite 3060
Alamosa, CO 81101, USA;
2
Tennessee Tech University, 1
Williams L Jones Drive, Cookeville, TN 38505, USA
mmsteffenson@adams.eduThere are a variety of different factors that can influence
the outcome of predator-prey interactions. One factor
that has received little attention is how physical impair-
ment can influence the ability of prey to survive predation
events. In this study, we aimed to identify how a specific
type of physical injury common to wolf spiders, autotomy,
can influence how capable prey are at surviving predation.
Female predatory
Rabidosa santrita
wolf spiders were
captured and allowed to deposit chemical cues in half
of the foraging arenas for three days prior to all preda-
tion trials. Females of the smaller prey species (
Pardosa
valens
) were brought back to the laboratory. If eggs sacs
were present they were removed, and half of the
P. valens
had a randomly chosen leg IV removed.
P. valens
were
then allowed 24 hours to acclimate to laboratory and
physical impairment conditions. Prey were then placed
in Tupperware arenas (half of which contained chemical
cues, and half of which did not) and allowed to acclimate
20
th
International Congress of Arachnology