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| Title |
Almost a spider: a 305-million-year-old fossil arachnid and spider origins
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, March 2016
|
| DOI | 10.1098/rspb.2016.0125 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Russell J. Garwood, Jason A. Dunlop, Paul A. Selden, Alan R. T. Spencer, Robert C. Atwood, Nghia T. Vo, Michael Drakopoulos |
| Abstract |
Spiders are an important animal group, with a long history. Details of their origins remain limited, with little knowledge of their stem group, and no insights into the sequence of character acquisition during spider evolution. We describe a new fossil arachnid,Idmonarachne brasierigen. et sp. nov. from the Late Carboniferous (Stephanian,ca305-299 Ma) of Montceau-les-Mines, France. It is three-dimensionally preserved within a siderite concretion, allowing both laboratory- and synchrotron-based phase-contrast computed tomography reconstruction. The latter is a first for siderite-hosted fossils and has allowed us to investigate fine anatomical details. Although distinctly spider-like in habitus, this remarkable fossil lacks a key diagnostic character of Araneae: spinnerets on the underside of the opisthosoma. It also lacks a flagelliform telson found in the recently recognized, spider-related, Devonian-Permian Uraraneida. Cladistic analysis resolves our new fossil as sister group to the spiders: the spider stem-group comprises the uraraneids andI. brasieri While we are unable to demonstrate the presence of spigots in this fossil, the recovered phylogeny suggests the earliest character to evolve on the spider stem-group is the secretion of silk. This would have been followed by the loss of a flagelliform telson, and then the ability to spin silk using spinnerets. This last innovation defines the true spiders, significantly post-dates the origins of silk, and may be a key to the group's success. The Montceau-les-Mines locality has previously yielded a mesothele spider (with spinnerets). Evidently, Late Palaeozoic spiders lived alongside Palaeozoic arachnid grades which approached the spider condition, but did not express the full suite of crown-group autapomorphies. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 10 | 11% |
| United States | 8 | 9% |
| Canada | 2 | 2% |
| Kenya | 1 | 1% |
| Italy | 1 | 1% |
| France | 1 | 1% |
| Argentina | 1 | 1% |
| Indonesia | 1 | 1% |
| Unknown | 69 | 73% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 72 | 77% |
| Scientists | 14 | 15% |
| Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 7 | 7% |
| Unknown | 1 | 1% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 92 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 2 | 2% |
| France | 1 | 1% |
| United Kingdom | 1 | 1% |
| New Zealand | 1 | 1% |
| Croatia | 1 | 1% |
| Unknown | 86 | 93% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 16 | 17% |
| Student > Bachelor | 15 | 16% |
| Researcher | 12 | 13% |
| Student > Master | 10 | 11% |
| Other | 7 | 8% |
| Other | 18 | 20% |
| Unknown | 14 | 15% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 34 | 37% |
| Earth and Planetary Sciences | 14 | 15% |
| Environmental Science | 6 | 7% |
| Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 4 | 4% |
| Engineering | 4 | 4% |
| Other | 8 | 9% |
| Unknown | 22 | 24% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 608. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 01 December 2023.
All research outputs
#39,506
of 26,370,058 outputs
Outputs from Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
#91
of 11,637 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#683
of 316,933 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
#3
of 145 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,370,058 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 11,637 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 41.2. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 316,933 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 145 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.