Systematics of the Spider Family Theridiidae

蜘蛛是地球上最多样化的生物之一，它们的织网能力和多样化的捕食策略是独一无二的。​除了是一个庞大而丰富的群体外，蝶科还表现出广泛的独特生态和行为特征，使它们变得异常有趣。例如，一些群体已经发展出只以其他物种的网为食的行为；其他公司则拥有复杂的网络架构；还有一些是群居的，生活在大型的公共网络中，分享捕捉昆虫和照顾卵和幼虫的活动。这个家族包括一些众所周知的和引人注目的形式，如夏威夷笑脸蜘蛛和臭名昭著的黑寡妇。在这项研究中，Rosemary Gillespie和Jonathan Coddington将利用几种不同类型的形态和分子特征来确定梳足蜘蛛之间的系统发育关系，这是一个以前很难解决的问题，因为系统发育分析的进步而变得更加容易处理。这项分析将帮助研究人员确定，在地球上这种蜘蛛家族的历史中，各种形状、大小、颜色、行为、生态关联和毒液是如何出现的，以及出现的频率。

9707744 GILLESPIE Spiders are among the most diverse groups of organisms on earth, and are exceptional for their web-spinning abilities and diverse feeding strategies. Although a number of studies have examined relationships among spiders, one of the seven largest families, the comb-footed spiders (Theridiidae), remains an assemblage of poorly defined species. Besides being a large and abundant group, the Theridiidae exhibit a wide spectrum of unique ecological and behavioral attributes that make them unusually interesting. For example, some groups have developed the behavior of feeding exclusively on the webs of other species; others have elaborate web architectures; still others are social, living in large communal webs and sharing in the activities of capturing insects and tending the eggs and young. The family includes some well known and striking forms, such as the Hawaiian happy face spider and the notorious Black Widow. In this research, Rosemary Gillespie and Jonathan Coddington will make use of several different types of morphological and molecular characters to determine the phylogenetic relationships among comb-footed spiders, a previously difficult problem made more tractable by advances in phylogenetic analysis. The analysis will help the investigators determine how, and how often, the many shapes, sizes, colors, behaviors, ecological associations and venoms have appeared during the history of this spider family on Earth.