Agelenidae

Breitling, Rainer, 2021, A completely resolved phylogenetic tree of British spiders (Arachnida: Araneae), Ecologica Montenegrina 46, pp. 1-51 : 7

Agelenidae

The tree for this family is based on the detailed study by Bolzern et al. (2013), combining morphological and molecular data for a dense sample of species. The deep relationships of the genera show major differences compared to the analysis of Wheeler et al. (2017), which included individual representatives of the same genera. Crews et al. (2020) include a larger number of species, and recover a tree that is similar to that reported by Wheeler et al. (2017), but seems overall poorly resolved. These disagreements illustrate how fragile some of the results of even the most recent molecular analyses still can be. The arrangement proposed by Bolzern et al. (2013) is preferred, as the molecular results in this case agree quite closely with those of a morphological analysis, while in the trees presented by Wheeler et al. (2017) and Crews et al. (2020) in particular the placement of Coelotes deeply within the remaining Agelenidae s. str. is unexpected (the genus is typically placed in the subfamily Coelotinae , which is sometimes even considered a separate family Coelotidae ). Agelena longipes is a phantom species as defined by Breitling et al. (2015, 2016), i.e., it was not rediscovered since its original description in 1900. It is thus considered a nomen dubium and is not included in the tree.