Abstract
The huntsman spiders’ genus Eusparassus are apex arthropod predators in desert ecosystems of the Afrotropical and Palearctic ecoregions. The Eusparassus dufouri and E. walckenaeri clades are two distinct taxonomic, phylogenetic, and geographic units concerning morphology, molecular phylogeny, and spatial data; but little is known about their ecological niche. We applied the maximum-entropy approach and modelled ecologic niches of these two phylogenetically closely related clades. Ecological niches of the two clades were compared using identity and background tests and two different metrics, the Schooner’s D and Warren’s I. We also predicted the impacts of climate change on the distribution of the two clades. The results of the identity test showed that the ecological niches of the two clades were different in geographic space but were similar in environmental space. While results of the background test revealed that the ecological niches of the two clades were similar in geographic and environmental space. This indicated that “niche conservatism” had an important role over the evolutionary time of allopatric diversification. However, the normalized difference vegetation index vs. topographic heterogeneity had influenced the niches of the dufouri and walckenaeri clades, respectively. The analyses recovered that the two clades’ climatically suitable habitats will increase under future climate (the year 2070). However, since the two clades are characterized by the narrow range of environmental optimum and the accordingly high limits of tolerance, they are vulnerable to climate change.
Highlights
Spiders, order Araneae, are the main arthropod predators in the terrestrial e cosystems[1]
We applied the independent lines of evidence-based studies including m orphology[7,8] and molecular phylogeny[11] integrated to geographical and environmental data to investigate the distribution modelling of two spider clades, E. dufouri clade and E. walckenaeri clade, to test whether these two allopatric clades are different based on their ecological niches
All niche models developed in this study performed well based on Area Under the Curve (AUC) metric
Summary
Order Araneae, are the main arthropod predators in the terrestrial e cosystems[1]. Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) methodologically uses a variety of statistical methods concerning large-scale climatic and topographic variables to estimate the ecological niche of taxa in relation to underlying environmental g radients[14]. These models are important tools in ecology, evolution and biogeography studies[15–18]. We applied the independent lines of evidence-based studies including m orphology[7,8] and molecular phylogeny[11] integrated to geographical and environmental data to investigate the distribution modelling of two spider clades, E. dufouri clade (western Mediterranean Europe and Africa) and E. walckenaeri clade (eastern Mediterranean and partly in the Middle East and NE Africa), to test whether these two allopatric clades are different based on their ecological niches
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