Alopecosa trabalis, (CLERCK, 1757)

Just, Pavel, Opatova, Vera & Dolejš, Petr, 2018, Does reproductive behaviour reflect phylogenetic relationships? An example from Central European Alopecosa wolf spiders (Araneae: Lycosidae), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 185, pp. 1039-1056 : 1048-1049

ALOPECOSA TRABALIS (CLERCK, 1757)

Czech Republic, Komárkova lesostep, forest steppe, 5 May 2011, 17 May 2011, lgt. P.J., P.D., number of copulations = 7

Five males began to court immediately, whereas two were latent (1.38 and 3.08 min). Courtship was initiated by escalating palpal movements (P_CR), which resulted in B_JS with B_D and A_ T.The front legs were raised, pointed forward, and occasionally dropped to the substrate. After courtship, which took µ = 5.16 min (SE = 2.01 min), females fell into catalepsy (C_E) and males began to mate. The copulations lasted for 0.91–8.00 min (µ = 3.98 min; SE = 0.88 min) and were composed of one to six (µ = 3.4; SE = 0.72) palpal insertions, with an average of 19.4 expansions per insertion (SE = 2.64). The total number of expansions was very high, ranging from 25 to 124 (µ = 66.7; SE = 11.31). The opisthosomal movement (O_Q) of the males was inconspicuous, and females sometimes woke up from the catalepsy during copulation and walked around the arena with males still copulating on their backs .

PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSES

Specimen information and GenBank accession codes for the sequences analysed in this study are listed in Table 1. The final concatenated supermatrix comprised 31 taxa and 1539 characters, including a fragment of the mitochondrial gene COI (611 characters, 207 variables) and two nuclear genes: H3 (346 characters, 90 variables) and 28S (582 characters retained after removing ambiguously aligned positions, 286 variables). The best partition scheme selected by PartitionFinder contained five partitions and the following evolutionary models: HKY+G was assigned to the first COI position, HKY+G to the second, and F81+I to the third COI position. Both 28S and the first position of H3 were combined in a single partition with the GTR+G model. The combined second and third positions of H3 were assigned with the JC model.

Preliminary ML analyses conducted on individual gene fragments did not reveal any incongruence in the topology of the supported clades (Supporting Information, Fig. S1), However, the support values were low for deeper nodes in both the COI and H3 tree topologies. In the concatenated analyses, both ML (−lnL = 9741.5) and BI analyses yielded the same topology (Supporting Information, Fig. S2). The tree obtained in the BI analyses, with both Bayesian posterior probabilities and ML bootstrap supports, is shown in Figure 2. Neither of the methods used in this study recovered the monophyly of Alopecosa . In both analyses, the genus was split into two distinct clades (clades ‘1’ and ‘2’). Clade 1 contained A. kochi and the Czech and Italian populations of A. farinosa ( ‘ fabrilis ’ group) and was recovered, with high support, as sister to a clade containing Geolycosa , Rabidosa and all representatives of the subfamily Pardosinae ( Pardosa and Draposa species). The remaining Alopecosa species included in the analyses were placed in a monophyletic clade (clade 2), which was recovered (albeit with low support) as sister to the genera Hogna and Trochosa . Furthermore, A. sulzeri was recovered as a sister group to all of the taxa included in clade 2. The monophyly of the ‘ striatipes ’ and ‘ fabrilis ’ groups was not recovered. The clade containing individuals from both groups and A. psammophila was recovered with high support in both analyses, but some within-clade relationships were supported only in the BI analyses. Moreover, individuals belonging to the ‘ pulverulenta ’ group formed a clade supported by both analyses.