Meeting Abstract
We produced an updated phylogeny of mite harvestman (Arachnida, Opiliones, Cyphophthalmi) belonging to the genus Rakaia based on sequence capture of Ultra-Conserved Elements (UCE), highly conserved regions of the genome shared across distant taxa. Rakaia is the most speciose and widespread mite harvestman genus in New Zealand; previous efforts to understand phylogenetic relationships within this group have been limited in terms of taxonomic sampling and number of loci. The degradation associated with many museum collections rules out the option of Sanger sequencing critical specimens; however, sequence capture methods allow sequencing of hundreds of loci across the genome from collections from as early as the 1860s. We sequenceded UCEs from 61 Rakaia specimens from all of the known species but one through a protocol that splices, amplifies, and hybridizes DNA for sequencing. Morphological and geographical data were used in tandem with molecular DNA data to identify undescribed species and test biogeographic hypotheses.
