ECOLOGICAL NICHE MODELS BY TITYUS SERRULATUS LUTZ & MELLO, 1922 AND TITYUS STIGMURUS (THORELL, 1876) (ARACHNIDA: SCORPIONES)

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  ECOLOGICAL NICHE MODELS BY TITYUS SERRULATUS LUTZ & MELLO, 1922 AND TITYUS STIGMURUS (THORELL, 1876) (ARACHNIDA: SCORPIONES) Summary Scorpions are venomous animals with high plasticity and can serve as models for biogeographical, natural history, and evolutionary studies. Ecological niche modeling can help in understanding essential characteristics of the geographic distribution of species, as well as allowing the prediction of future distribution patterns. Our objective was to model the ecological niche of the scorpion species *Tityus serrulatus * and *Tityus stigmurus* , as well as to identify the variables that influence their distribution in different biomes and their range limits in the Amazon, Caatinga, and Cerrado biomes. Data were obtained from 12 Brazilian arachnological collections. Bioclimatic variables were obtained from the WorldClim database, and niche modeling was implemented using the Maximum Entropy algorithm. The results showed that the Atlantic Forest bio...

The Evolutionary Biology of Chelicerata

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The Evolutionary Biology of Chelicerata

Chelicerata constitutes an ancient, biodiverse, and ecologically significant group of Arthropoda. The study of chelicerate evolution has undergone a renaissance in the past decade, resulting in major changes to our understanding of the higher-level phylogeny and internal relationships of living orders. Included among these conceptual advances are the discoveries of multiple whole-genome duplication events in a subset of chelicerate orders, such as horseshoe crabs, spiders, and scorpions. As a result, longstanding hypotheses and textbook scenarios of chelicerate evolution, such as the monophyly of Arachnida and a single colonization of land by the common ancestor of arachnids, have come into contention. The retention of ancient, duplicated genes across this lineage also offers fertile ground for investigating the role of gene duplication in chelicerate macroevolution. This new frontier of investigation is paralleled by the timely establishment of the first gene editing protocols for arachnid models, facilitating a new generation of experimental approaches.

Sharma, P. P., & Gavish-Regev, E. (2024). The Evolutionary Biology of Chelicerata. Annual Review of Entomology. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ento-022024-011250