In Memoriam: Giraldo Alayón García

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  In Memoriam: Giraldo Alayón García -  Photo © Facebook/National Museum of Natural History of Cuba In Memoriam: Giraldo Alayón García The arachnological community mourns the loss of Giraldo Alayón García, a Cuban zoologist whose work helped bring the spiders of Cuba and the wider Caribbean into clearer scientific view. As a researcher and curator at Cuba’s National Museum of Natural History, Dr. Alayón devoted decades to studying arachnids. His publications on spider taxonomy, evolution, and biogeography gave other researchers a stronger foundation for understanding the region’s biodiversity. He also shared that knowledge through teaching and scientific exchange far beyond Cuba. For those of us who care about taxonomy, his legacy is a reminder of the patient work behind every species description: examining specimens, recording differences, and preserving knowledge that others can build upon. His contributions will continue to guide the study of Caribbean spiders for years to ...

The Asian Dragon Puzzle: how multiple dispersal events have shaped the evolutionary history of Eastern Asian dragon pseudoscorpions (Arachnida: Pseudoscorpiones: Allochthonius)

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The Asian Dragon Puzzle: how multiple dispersal events have shaped the evolutionary history of Eastern Asian dragon pseudoscorpions (Arachnida: Pseudoscorpiones: Allochthonius)

Abstract

East Asia is a biodiversity hotspot shaped by plate collisions, mountain orogeny, and sea-level fluctuations, yet evolutionary and biogeographical processes shaping East Asia’s endemic invertebrates remain poorly understood. We investigated these processes using Allochthonius pseudoscorpions, an ancient East Asian lineage serving as a proxy for leaf-litter invertebrates with limited dispersal abilities. Our dataset comprised 61 Allochthonius specimens representing 44 species-level units sampled from China, South Korea, Japan, and the Russian Far East, together with eight outgroup terminals and four molecular markers totalling 2550 bp. Phylogenetic analyses, divergence time estimation, and ancestral range reconstruction were used to examine historical biogeography and dispersal patterns. Allochthonius was recovered as monophyletic, with an estimated Early Cretaceous origin, and is now confined to East Asia, although an Eocene Baltic amber fossil indicates a formerly broader distribution. Divergence patterns reveal historical range shifts among Japan, the Korean Peninsula, and China associated with transient land connections from the Late Cretaceous to the Quaternary. Repeated faunal exchanges between the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Archipelago indicate a complex history of dispersal and vicariance. Despite limited dispersal capacity, some lineages occur on both continental-shelf and volcanic islands. Collectively, these findings show that Allochthonius diversification reflects dynamic responses to repeated geographic connectivity, isolation, and habitat fragmentation from the Late Cretaceous to the Quaternary, highlighting the interplay of dispersal and vicariance in shaping biogeographical patterns of low-dispersal soil arthropods.

Jeong, K. H., Kim, D., Guo, X., Johnson, J., Zhang, F., Harms, D., & Kim, S. (2026). The Asian Dragon Puzzle: How multiple dispersal events have shaped the evolutionary history of Eastern Asian dragon pseudoscorpions (Arachnida: Pseudoscorpiones: Allochthonius). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 208(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlag147