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Summary: From a comb to a tree: phylogenetic relationships
of the comb-footed spiders (Araneae, Theridiidae) inferred
from nuclear and mitochondrial genes
Miquel A. Arnedo,a,* Jonathan Coddington,b
Ingi Agnarsson,b,c
and Rosemary G. Gillespiea
a
Division of Insect Biology, ESPM, 201 Wellman Hall, University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-3112, USA
b
Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Systematic Biology--Entomology, E-530, NHB-105,
10th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20560-0105, USA
c
Department of Biological Sciences, George Washington University, 2023 G Street NW, Washington, DC 20052, USA
Received 20 March 2003; revised 1 July 2003
Abstract
The family Theridiidae is one of the most diverse assemblages of spiders, from both a morphological and ecological point of view.
The family includes some of the very few cases of sociality reported in spiders, in addition to bizarre foraging behaviors such as
kleptoparasitism and araneophagy, and highly diverse web architecture. Theridiids are one of the seven largest families in the
Araneae, with about 2200 species described. However, this species diversity is currently grouped in half the number of genera
described for other spider families of similar species richness. Recent cladistic analyses of morphological data have provided an
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