title: Extant primitively segmented spiders have recently diversified from an ancient lineage.
abstract: Living fossils are lineages that have retained plesiomorphic traits through long time periods. It is expected that such lineages have both originated and diversified long ago. Such expectations have recently been challenged in some textbook examples of living fossils, notably in extant cycads and coelacanths. Using a phylogenetic approach, we tested the patterns of the origin and diversification of liphistiid spiders, a clade of spiders considered to be living fossils due to their retention of arachnid plesiomorphies and their exclusive grouping in Mesothelae, an ancient clade sister to all modern spiders. Facilitated by original sampling throughout their Asian range, we here provide the phylogenetic framework necessary for reconstructing liphistiid biogeographic history. All phylogenetic analyses support the monophyly of Liphistiidae and of eight genera. As the fossil evidence supports a Carboniferous Euramerican origin of Mesothelae, our dating analyses postulate a long eastward over-land dispersal towards the Asian origin of Liphistiidae during the Palaeogene (39-58 Ma). Contrary to expectations, diversification within extant liphistiid genera is relatively recent, in the Neogene and Late Palaeogene (4-24 Ma). While no over-water dispersal events are needed to explain their evolutionary history, the history of liphistiid spiders has the potential to play prominently in vicariant biogeographic studies.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Behavioural Ecology and Evolution (CBEE), College of Life Sciences, Hubei University, Wuhan, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Centre for Behavioural Ecology and Evolution (CBEE), College of Life Sciences, Hubei University, Wuhan, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Fengxiang
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Evolutionary Zoology Laboratory, Biological Institute ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Ren-Chung
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: Centre for Behavioural Ecology and Evolution (CBEE), College of Life Sciences, Hubei University, Wuhan, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: College of Life Sciences, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xiang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Eco-environments in Three Gorges Reservoir Region (Ministry of Education), School of Life Science, Southwest University, Chongqing, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Zhisheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, National Museum of Nature and Science, 4-1-1 Amakubo, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken 305-0005, Japan.
authors.forename: Hirotsugu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ono
authors.affiliation: Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources (IEBR), Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology (VAST), 18 Hoang Quoc Viet, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam.
authors.forename: Dinh Sac
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Pham
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Norma-Rashid
authors.affiliation: Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat, Departament de Biologia Animal, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda Diagonal 643, Barcelona 08028, Spain.
authors.forename: Miquel A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Arnedo
authors.affiliation: Centre for Behavioural Ecology and Evolution (CBEE), College of Life Sciences, Hubei University, Wuhan, People's Republic of China Evolutionary Zoology Laboratory, Biological Institute ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, Slovenia Department of Entomology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA kuntner@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Matjaž
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kuntner
authors.affiliation: Centre for Behavioural Ecology and Evolution (CBEE), College of Life Sciences, Hubei University, Wuhan, People's Republic of China Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore dbslidq@nus.edu.sg.
authors.forename: Daiqin
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D060829:Arthropod Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D001210:Asia, Southeastern; D005075:Biological Evolution; D005202:Asia, Eastern; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D013112:Spiders / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D060829:Arthropod Proteins
keywords: ancestral areas; dispersal; genetic diversity; living fossils; plesiomorphies; vicariance