BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMATICS: TAXONOMY AND PHYLOGENY of Arachnids
Arachnids play significant roles in both agricultural and natural ecosystems and suffer from insufficient basic taxonomic study. In Israel, there are still knowledge gaps in our understanding of the arachnofauna diversity and distribution. Such gaps in our knowledge hinder our understanding of ecological systems and raise obstacles to characterizing the complexity and understanding the mechanisms forming biodiversity
In the National Arachnid Collection and Laboratory we study all arachnids found in Israel, and especially Spider families Agelenidae (Ph.D. student Shlomi Aharon), Amaurobiidae, Dysderidae (undergraduate student Yuval Zalts and Ph.D. student Zeana Ganem), Filistatidae (Ph.D. student Zeana Ganem), Gnaphosidae, Linyphiidae, Lycosidae (Ph.D. student Igor Armiach Steinpress), Pholcidae (Ph.D. student Shlomi Aharon), Sicariidae (Ph.D. student Zeana Ganem), Theridiidae (M.Sc. student Tanya Levy) and Titanoecidae.Sc. Student Rami Hamuri) as well as all arachnid orders found in Israel: Scorpiones (M.Sc. student Yoram Zvik), Pseudoscorpiones (Post-Doctoral fellow Sharon Warburg, in collaboration with Dr. Danilo Harms), Amblypygi, Opiliones (in collaboration with Prof. Prashant Sharma), Palpigradi (in collaboration with Dr. Jesus Ballesteros and Prof. Prashant Sharma) and Solifugae (in collaboration with Prof. Prashant Sharma and others).
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Santibáñez-López C.E., Aharon S., Ballesteros J.A., Gainett G., González-Santillán E., Harvey M.S., Hassan MK., Abu-Almaaty AH., Aldeyarbi SM., Monod L., Ojanguren-Affilastro A.,Raven R., Pinto-Da-Rocha R., Zvik Y., Gavish-Regev E., and P.P. Sharma, 2022. Phylogenomics of scorpions reveal a co-diversification of scorpion mammalian predators and mammal-specific sodium channel toxins. Systematic Biology. doi: 10.1093/sysbio/syac021. 15.683; 3/50 (EvBiol). |
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Ballesteros J.A., Santibáñez-López C.E., Baker C.M., Benavides L.R., Cunha T.J. , Gainett G., Ontano A. Z., Setton E.V.W., Arango C.P., Gavish-Regev E., Harvey M.S., Wheeler W.C., Hormiga G., Giribet G., and P.P. Sharma. 2022. Comprehensive Species Sampling and Sophisticated Algorithmic Approaches Refute the Monophyly of Arachnida, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 39, 2 (16 pp.). doi:10.1093/molbev/msac021. |
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Ontano A. Z., Gainett G., Aharon S., Ballesteros, J.A., Benavides L.R., Corbett K.F., Gavish-Regev E., Harvey M.S., Monsma S., Santibáñez-López C.E., Setton E.V.W., Zehms, J.T. Zeh J.A., Zeh D.W., and P.P. Sharma, 2021. Taxonomic sampling and rare genomic changes overcome long-branch attraction in the phylogenetic placement of pseudoscorpions. Molecular Biology and Evolution, msab038, doi:10.1093/molbev/msab038. |
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Ballesteros J.A., Santibáñez-López C.E., Kovác L., Gavish-Regev E., and Sharma P.P., 2019. Ordered phylogenomic subsampling enables diagnosis of systematic errors in the placement of the enigmatic, long branch arachnid order Palpigradi. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 286, 20192426 (9 pp.). doi:10.1098/rspb.2019.2426. |
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2. Gavish-Regev, E., Hormiga, G., and Scharff N., 2013. Pedipalp Sclerite homologies and phylogenetic placement of the spider genus Stemonyphantes (Linyphiidae, Araneae) and its implications for linyphiid phylogeny. Invertebrate Systematics, 27, 38-52. doi:10.1071/IS12014. |
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