Phylogeography of Australian and New Zealand spray zone spiders (Anyphaenidae:Amaurobioides): Moa's Ark loses a few more passengers

Amaurobioides are restricted to the spray zone of southern continents, where they live in small, isolated populations and hunt from silk retreats built in rock crevices. A Star BEAST species tree based on ITS1 nuclear and ND1 mitochondrial genes did not support the hypothesis that this unusual niche linked the evolutionary history of these spiders to geological events reshaping Gondwana into present-day Australia and New Zealand. Instead, it showed that Amaurobioides reached Australia approximately 4.5 Mya and dispersed twice to New Zealand. Approximately 2.37 Mya, spiders from Tasmania colonized the Deep South of the South Island and, approximately 0.38 Mya, those from South Australia colonized more northern regions. Thus, the present study further limits the scope of the Moa’s Ark hypothesis of vicariant New Zealand biogeography.