Linking neotropical biomes in a spider web

"Conectando biomas neotropicais em uma rede de aranha"

 

Vera N. Solferini

Departamento de Genética e Evolução

Universidade Estadual de Campinas

 

There is a general agreement that the evolutionary history of neotropical diversity is very complex and still poorly understood. More recently, phylogeographic approaches have been adding many valuable pieces to this great puzzle, providing inferences about the past events that shaped the species' present distribution. We have conducted  phylogeographic studies with four neotropical spider genus. Our results corroborate a subdivision between the Tropical and Temperate portions of South America, indicate that the Amazonia, Northern Atlantic Forest and Cerrado are not evolutionary isolated units and that the histories of Neotropical biomes are not independent.