COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Phylogenomics, spatial phylogenetics and conservation prioritization in trapdoor spiders (and kin) of the California Floristic Province

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The California Floristic Province is a planetary biodiversity hotspot that extends from southwest Oregon to northwest Baja California and hosts many unique plant and animal species. Many factors, including drought and changing fire regimes, pose a significant threat to species restricted to the California Floristic Province. These threats are potentially greatest for animals that move very little, or occur in special habitats, such as mygalomorph spiders (tarantulas, trap-door spiders, and their kin). Over 70 species of mygalomorphs inhabit California, and conservative estimates indicate dozens of additional species that await discovery. This project will establish mygalomorph localities for long-term observation and measurement of trends in population sizes, develop new methods of using genetic data to distinguish species from one another, and identify areas of the California landscape that are particularly rich in mygalomorph species and other taxa. These data will have important implications for conservation prioritization and will inform scientists about the evolutionary processes that have contributed to tremendous species diversity in the California Floristic Province. This project will train students and other researchers in specimen collection, curation, and techniques in genetic data generation and computational analysis. Research experience and specialized advising will also be offered to select community college students from underrepresented groups who plan to transfer to four-year Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) programs.Using a combination of original fieldwork, newly developed analytical methods for genetically identifying species and their evolutionary and geographic relationships, this research project will develop trapdoor spiders as an exemplary group for biodiversity knowledge and conservation in the California Floristic Province (CA-FP). Long-term surveys will be conducted at multiple geographic locations that include most major CA-FP habitat types. At these sites, the presence of spider species and the numbers of individuals in each will be measured to provide a statistical baseline for future monitoring efforts. New large DNA datasets, based on analysis of thousands of genes, will be generated by analysis of the genomes of these species. New methods will be applied to this data to identify species boundaries, and formal taxonomic descriptions will be made for all new species. The new information about these new species and their genetic relationships will be used to assess patterns of biodiversity in this spider group across the complex geography of the CA-FP. Statistical comparisons of the geographic patterns of spider species distribution will be made to CA-FP plants and vertebrates, and these results will be used to determine whether biodiversity “hotspots” coincide with federal, state, and locally protected areas.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.