Lacie Newton’s Research on Folding-Door Spiders featured in Molecular Ecology
This is a male folding-door spider, Antrodiaetus, the subject of Lacie Newton's research. (Photo courtesy of Jason Bond)
Where do you draw the line or species boundaries between what defines one species from another? Evolutionary biologists argue over the issue and sometimes they just “agree to disagree.”
The question is crucial “because it is the foundation of essentially all biological questions,” says spider systematics researcher Lacie Newton, a doctoral student in the Bond at UC Davis, Department of Entomology and Nematology, and the lead author of newly published research that explores that question.
“For example,” Newton says, “making successful conservation efforts depends on knowing how to identify the threatened/endangered species from other closely related species that are not threatened.”
Her research on folding-door spiders or the Antrodiaetus unicolor species complex led to a journal article published in Molecular Ecology: “Integrative Species Delimitation Reveals Cryptic Diversity in the Southern Appalachian Antrodiaetus unicolor (Araneae: Antrodiaetidae) Species Complex.” UC Davis co-authors are Professor Bond, who is the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, and project scientist James Starrett of the Bond lab.