In the land of the blind: Exceptional subterranean speciation of cryptic troglobitic spiders of the genus Tegenaria (Araneae: Agelenidae) in Israel.

Caves have long been recognized as a window into the mechanisms of diversification and convergent evolution, due to the unique conditions of isolation and life in the dark. These lead to adaptations and reduce dispersal and gene flow, resulting in high levels of speciation and endemism. The Israeli cave arachnofauna remains poorly known, but likely represents a rich assemblage.

Recent speciation and phenotypic plasticity within a parthenogenetic lineage of levantine whip spiders (Chelicerata: Amblypygi: Charinidae).

Caves constitute ideal study systems for investigating adaptation and speciation, as the abiotic conditions shared by aphotic habitats exert a set of environmental filters on their communities. Arachnids constitute an important component of many cave ecosystems worldwide. We investigated the population genomics of two whip spider species: Sarax ioanniticus, a widely distributed parthenogenetic species found across the eastern Mediterranean; and S.

Phylogenomics of Scorpions Reveal Contemporaneous Diversification of Scorpion Mammalian Predators and Mammal-Active Sodium Channel Toxins.

Scorpions constitute a charismatic lineage of arthropods and comprise more than 2500 described species. Found throughout various tropical and temperate habitats, these predatory arachnids have a long evolutionary history, with a fossil record that began in the Silurian. While all scorpions are venomous, the asymmetrically diverse family Buthidae harbors nearly half the diversity of extant scorpions, and all but one of the 58 species that are medically significant to humans.

Five-Year Monitoring of a Desert Burrow-Dwelling Spider Following an Environmental Disaster Indicates Long-Term Impacts.

Deserts are characterized by unpredictable precipitation and extreme temperatures. Their fauna and flora are sensitive to anthropogenic environmental changes, and often recover slowly from environmental disasters. The effects of oil spills on the biota of desert regions, however, have scarcely been studied.

Taxonomic Sampling and Rare Genomic Changes Overcome Long-Branch Attraction in the Phylogenetic Placement of Pseudoscorpions.

Long-branch attraction is a systematic artifact that results in erroneous groupings of fast-evolving taxa. The combination of short, deep internodes in tandem with long-branch attraction artifacts has produced empirically intractable parts of the Tree of Life. One such group is the arthropod subphylum Chelicerata, whose backbone phylogeny has remained unstable despite improvements in phylogenetic methods and genome-scale data sets.

Genetic improvement of wheat early vigor promote weed-competitiveness under Mediterranean climate.

Chemical weed-control is the most effective practice for wheat, however, rapid evolution of herbicide-resistant weeds threat food-security and calls for integration of non-chemical practices. We hypothesis that integration of alternative GA-responsive dwarfing genes into elite wheat cultivars can promote early vigor and weed-competitiveness under Mediterranean climate. We develop near-isogenic lines of bread wheat cultivars with GAR dwarfing genes and evaluate them for early vigor and weed-competitiveness under various environmental and management conditions to identify promising NIL for weed-competitiveness and grain yield.

Systemic paralogy and function of retinal determination network homologs in arachnids.

Background: Arachnids are important components of cave ecosystems and display many examples of troglomorphisms, such as blindness, depigmentation, and elongate appendages. Little is known about how the eyes of arachnids are specified genetically, let alone the mechanisms for eye reduction and loss in troglomorphic arachnids. Additionally, duplication of Retinal Determination Gene Network (RDGN) homologs in spiders has convoluted functional inferences extrapolated from single-copy homologs in pancrustacean models.

Good reasons to leave home: proximate dispersal cues in a social spider.

Natal dispersal is a successful tactic under a range of conditions in spite of significant costs. Habitat quality is a frequent proximate cause of dispersal, and studies have shown that dispersal increases both when natal habitat quality is good or poor. In social species kin competition, favouring dispersal may be balanced by the benefits of group living, favouring philopatry.