ABSTRACT

Camel spiders, also known as wind scorpions or solifuges, are an important group of arachnids found in fragile, often threatened desert ecosystems. They are dominant predators of insects and other arthropods in arid habitats and are also important prey for many desert species. Solifuges are notoriously difficult to study since they are hard to find and collect, nearly impossible to keep alive in the lab, and challenging to identify. Contrary to their name, they are not true spiders and do not build webs but represent a unique arachnid group with over 1,100 species known worldwide. With only a few scientists studying any aspect of their biology, there is a pressing need to train a new generation of scientists devoted to the biology of this diverse group. This project will revolutionize the study of this component of the planet's biodiversity by training young biologists, including high school students, undergraduates, graduate students, and a postdoctoral scholar. They will use state-of-the-art molecular tools to better understand the evolutionary relationships among species in the most common and diverse group of camel spiders in North America, the Eremobatidae. Another goal of the project is to use camel spiders as a model system to explore how Earth history events have influenced the evolution and assembly of species in desert communities. This grant leverages the only remaining expertise on North American camel spiders to excite a new generation of scientists who will move this field forward. An innovative and interactive online identification guide, the Camel Spiders of North America, will be developed to enable scientists, naturalists, educators, and others to identify and learn about these little-known animals. The guide will provide a resource for a broad audience and will support the development and expansion of an informative new website on camel spider biology (www.solifugae.info).

This project addresses the systematic and taxonomic impediments in the study of camel spiders by using existing expertise to train students in cutting-edge phylogenomic, biogeographic, and taxonomic methodology. A recently published multi-locus phylogeny of one of the largest families of camel spiders, the Eremobatidae, will provide a starting point for a more thorough analysis using targeted enrichment of ultraconserved elements, along with novel and underexplored morphological characters thought to be taxonomically informative. Restriction site-associated DNA sequencing (RADseq) will be used to generate genome-wide SNP data for the very first phylogeographic analyses of camel spiders by examining two well-defined species groups. Extensive fieldwork carried out as part of this project, particularly in the Chihuahuan Desert, Baja California peninsula, and California Coast Ranges, will undoubtedly reveal many new species in this family, greatly enhancing the understanding of arachnid diversity present in these under-explored arid ecosystems.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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