Phylogenetic evidence for an independent origin of extreme sexual size dimorphism in a genus of araneid spiders (Araneae: Araneidae)
Kuang-Ping Yu A B C D , Matjaž Kuntner A B E and Ren-Chung Cheng
C D *
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Evolutionary Zoology Laboratory, Department of Organisms and Ecosystems Research, National Institute of Biology, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
B University of Ljubljana, Biotechnical Faculty, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
C Department of Life Sciences, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan.
D Research Center for Global Change Biology, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan.
E Jovan Hadži Institute of Biology, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Invertebrate Systematics 36(1) 48-62 https://doi.org/10.1071/IS21019
Submitted: 23 March 2021 Accepted: 25 July 2021 Published: 31 January 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing.
Abstract
Cyphalonotus is a poorly studied Old World araneid spider genus of which the phylogenetic proximity remains unknown due to the paucity of morphological and molecular data. We test the phylogenetic placement and the taxonomic composition of Cyphalonotus and place the male and female size variation of Cyphalonotus and related genera in an evolutionary context. Our collection and field observations from Taiwan and China facilitate description of a new and a known species, and original sequence data enable species delimitation and phylogenetic analyses. The phylogenetic results reject all four classification hypotheses from the literature and instead recover a well-supported clade comprising Cyphalonotus + Poltys. We review the male and female size variation in Cyphalonotus, Poltys and related genera. These data reveal that all known species of Poltys are extremely sexually size dimorphic (eSSD = females over twice the size of males) reaching values exceeding 10-fold differences, whereas Cyphalonotus and other genera in phylogenetic proximity are relatively sexually monomorphic (SSD < 2.0). This confirms an independent origin of eSSD in Poltys, one of multiple convergent evolutionary outcomes in orbweb spiders.
Keywords: Cyphalonotus, eSSD, extreme phenotype, female gigantism, orbweb spider, male dwarfism, Poltys, sexual size monomorphism, size evolution.
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