Species distributions in oceanic islands or in underground ecosystems may show some striking features. In islands, closely related taxa with largely overlapping distributions are frequently reported, while some cave-dwelling species are widespread across several cave localities that are not connected. In collaboration with Dr. Pedro Oromí (Canary Islands, Spain), I am conducting research on the phylogeographic patterns of some of the aforementioned cases that occur in the Canary Islands and their lava tubes

Although DNA sequences have been proven to be extremely useful to resolve phylogenetic relationships among spiders, the current knowledge on the spider genome is scarce and constrains available molecular markers to just a handful of genes. We aim to improve this situation through the generation of a wealth of genomic data for spiders. Central to this effort is the construction of several cDNA libraries for targeted spider taxa and the production of hundred of ESTs (expressed sequences tags) from these libraries for discovering new genes amenable to genomic PCR amplification. At the same time, we are using high-throughput sequencing techniques to obtain sequences for current standard markers in spider phylogenetics. This research line is part of the ongoing Assembling the Tree of Life: Phylogeny of Spiders, an ambitious five-year project whose main goal is to reconstruct the interfamilial relationships of the Order Araneae. A multidisciplinary team of 21 researchers in 14 institutions and four countries are carrying out this research project with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (Visit http://research.amnh.org/atol/files/index.html for further information).

Islands are considered the test-tube experiments of evolutionary biology. However, the distinctiveness of traits and evolutionary trends of island organisms suggests that island evolution may be governed by different forces and subjected to different rules. There has been little effort to date to assess the uniqueness of the evolutionary process in isolated systems or, alternatively, demonstrating the parallelisms of species diversification on islands and continents. I aim to solve this deficiency by using a common analytical framework, based on species level phylogenies, to compare the patterns displayed by organisms that have undergone diversification within both systems. The circum-Mediterranean spider genus Dysdera lends itself to such comparisons. It has colonised all Macaronesian archipelagos and in some of them has undergone adaptive radiations, but is also one of the most species-rich genus in the neighbouring Mediterranean mainland. Central to my study is the inference of a molecular phylogeny for about 150 dysderid species that will be the basis to investigate three main aspects of the evolutionary process: rates of speciation, patterns of geographic speciation, and their relationship to morphological diversification.