Spiders on a Hot Volcanic Roof: Colonisation Pathways and Phylogeography of the Canary Islands Endemic Trap-Door Spider Titanidiops canariensis (Araneae, Idiopidae)

Studies conducted on volcanic islands have greatly contributed to our current understanding of how organisms diversify. The Canary Islands archipelago, located northwest of the coast of northern Africa, harbours a large number of endemic taxa. Because of their low vagility, mygalomorph spiders are usually absent from oceanic islands. The spider Titanidiops canariensis, which inhabits the easternmost islands of the archipelago, constitutes an exception to this rule. Here, we use a multi-locus approach that combines three mitochondrial and four nuclear genes to investigate the origins and phylogeography of this remarkable trap-door spider. We provide a timeframe for the colonisation of the Canary Islands using two alternative approaches: concatenation and species tree inference in a Bayesian relaxed clock framework. Additionally, we investigate the existence of cryptic species on the islands by means of a Bayesian multi-locus species delimitation method. Our results indicate that T. canariensis colonised the Canary Islands once, most likely during the Miocene, although discrepancies between the timeframes from different approaches make the exact timing uncertain. A complex evolutionary history for the species in the archipelago is revealed, which involves two independent colonisations of Fuerteventura from the ancestral range of T. canariensis in northern Lanzarote and a possible back colonisation of southern Lanzarote. The data further corroborate a previously proposed volcanic refugium, highlighting the impact of the dynamic volcanic history of the island on the phylogeographic patterns of the endemic taxa. T. canariensis includes at least two different species, one inhabiting the Jandia peninsula and central Fuerteventura and one spanning from central Fuerteventura to Lanzarote. Our data suggest that the extant northern African Titanidiops lineages may have expanded to the region after the islands were colonised and, hence, are not the source of colonisation. In addition, T. maroccanus may harbour several cryptic species.

Back to the island of calm: mallorcan human traditional medicine and ethnobotany

This study reveals that a successful ethnobotanical survey can take place still nowadays, even close to one of the hotspots of tourism in the Mediterranean coast. This is the first approach in this field entirely based on interviews with local people in Mallorca. An amount of 235 informants has been inquired from all the 53 municipalities of the island. The data collected have been analyzed from the botanical and ethnographical points of view, and managed using the online platform of our research team (details at www.etnobiofic.cat). The Mallorcan ethnopharmacopoeia includes 255 plant taxa referring more than 150 medicinal use categories. Ethnomedical queries as the one here presented contribute to the knowledge of the traditional use of plants of the island and appreciate the benefits of this knowledge, applied to the present and future of its society.

Back to the island of calm: Mallorcan human traditional medicine and ethnobotany

This study reveals that a successful ethnobotanical survey can take place still nowadays, even close to one of the hotspots of tourism in the Mediterranean coast. This is the first approach in this field entirely based on interviews with local people in Mallorca. An amount of 235 informants has been inquired from all the 53 municipalities of the island. The data collected have been analyzed from the botanical and ethnographical points of view, and managed using the online platform of our research team (details at www.etnobiofic.cat). The Mallorcan ethnopharmacopoeia includes 255 plant taxa referring more than 150 medicinal use categories. Ethnomedical queries as the one here presented contribute to the knowledge of the traditional use of plants of the island and appreciate the benefits of this knowledge, applied to the present and future of its society.