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Abstract
Morphological study of 1,795 spiders from sites across Pakistan placed these specimens in 27 families and 202 putative species. COI sequences >400 bp recovered from 1,782 specimens were analyzed using neighbor-joining trees, Bayesian inference, barcode gap, and Barcode Index Numbers (BINs). Specimens of 109 morphological species were assigned to 123 BINs with ten species showing BIN splits, while 93 interim species included representatives of 98 BINs. Maximum conspecific divergences ranged from 0–5.3% while congeneric distances varied from 2.8–23.2%. Excepting one species pair (Oxyopes azhari–Oxyopes oryzae), the maximum intraspecific distance was always less than the nearest-neighbor (NN) distance. Intraspecific divergence values were not significantly correlated with geographic distance. Most (75%) BINs detected in this study were new to science, while those shared with other nations mainly derived from India. The discovery of many new, potentially endemic species and the low level of BIN overlap with other nations highlight the importance of constructing regional DNA barcode reference libraries.
Highlights
With nearly 48,000 known species in 117 families [1], spiders are a major component of terrestrial ecosystems with important practical applications as biocontrol agents [2] and as bio-indicators [3,4]
The current study aimed to develop a barcode library for the spider fauna of Pakistan and investigate the spider diversity overlap with other regions using Barcode Index Numbers (BINs)
A recent checklist for the spiders of Pakistan [10] included records for 239 species, but the present study has substantially increased this total by adding first records for 84 described species and another 93 that could not be assigned to a known taxon
Summary
With nearly 48,000 known species in 117 families [1], spiders are a major component of terrestrial ecosystems with important practical applications as biocontrol agents [2] and as bio-indicators [3,4]. Prior studies have documented 4,300 spider species in Europe [5] and a similar number (3,800) in the Nearctic [6]. Just 2,300 species have been reported from South Asia [7], suggesting that many species await detection in this region. Studies on the spider fauna of Pakistan began nearly a century ago [8], work has recently intensified, but most of these studies have produced regional checklists (S1 Table).
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