Taxonomic Study Of The Genus Pseudopoda J(?)ger,2000 In China Based On Morphology And DNA Barcoding (Araneae:Sparassidae)

The taxonomic researches for many taxa were impeded by the high-demanding classical taxonomic expertise and the decreased taxonomic practitioners in recent years.For most hiperdiverse organisms,especially some tropical arthropods,the currently described species only a small fraction of that expected,and thus to catalogue it,more rapid taxonomic assessments need to be employed.DNA Barcoding have been concerned by many scholars and employed in solving the problem of Arthropod taxonomy since it was proposed.With 121 described species,the genus Pseudopoda Jager,2000 is the third largest genus of the family Sparassidae,although its actual species diversity is insufficiently known.Its species inhabit mountainous forests of southern,eastern and southeastern Asia,and are mostly confined to distinct altitudinal zones between 300 and 3800 m.About half of the known diversity,51 species,is known from China.Most species have extremely confined distributions(e.g.P.mediana Quan et al.2014 and P.bicruris Quan et al.2014)but their ranges also often overlap(Figure 1 and Figure 5).In Pseudopoda,morphological species delimitation is challenging due to species sympatry,habitus resemblance,and potential abundance of cryptic species.Specialists thus agree that in order to discover and identify species and to accurately resolve the taxonomy in this genus,a combination of morphological and molecular approaches is required.The present dissertation deals with the taxonomic study of Pseudopoda from the morphology level and DNA level based on the Pseudopoda specimens accumulated over the years in the lab and from the field collections.Two parts are included:Part Ⅰ:we pair rapid DNA barcoding methods with swift assessment of morphology in an effort to gauge diversity,establish species limits,and rapidly disseminate taxonomic information on poorly studied,but diverse Pseudopoda spiders from East Asia.We augmented the standard barcoding locus(COI)with nuclear DNA sequence data(ITS2)and analyzed congruence among datasets and species delimitation methods for a total of 573 individuals representing 23 previously known species.Our results suggest that a combination of COI + ITS2 fragments identify and diagnose species better than the mitochondrial barcodes alone,and that certain tree based methods(GMYC,bPTP)yield considerably higher diversity estimates than the distance-based approaches(Barcoding gap,PID,ABGD)and morphology.Combined,we detect a twofold increase in species diversity at 42-45,with most species being short range endemics.Our study demonstrates the power of biodiversity assessments and swift dissemination of taxonomic data through rapid inventory,and through a combination of morphological and multi-locus DNA barcoding diagnoses of diverse arthropod lineages.Part Ⅱ deals with the general information of the genus Pseudopoda,and its morphology and taxonomy.We reported the result of a detailed study of 42 species including 19 new species,2 known species with newly reported females in the world,21 known species.Descriptions,photos,specimens examined and geography data are given to each new species or new reported species.We provided photos,specimens examined and geography data to each known species.