Laniatores
Creators: name: Kury, Adriano B.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2015
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Arachnida
Opiliones

description: Phylogeny of Laniatores
The armored harvestmen (Laniatores) are here presented in more detail, separated from the rest of the Opiliones. In Figs. 12 to 19, the relevant hypotheses found in the literature concerning the branching pattern of the Laniatores are presented. The six following genera are here used to represent the major groups of Laniatores as currently understood: Erebomaster (for the Travunioidea s.s.), Equitius (for the Triaenonychoidea), Synthetonychia (for the Synthetonychiidae), Gnomulus (for the Sandokanidae / Oncopodidae, consistently deemed to hold a special position), Phalangodes and Gonyleptes. See Table 4 for details.
The monophyly of this suborder has not been challenged since Perty (1833), who ranked the Cosmetidae together with the Eupnoi.
Hypothesis L1 (Fig. 12) was prevalent by the end of 19th century. The young Triaenonychidae and Oncopodidae did not have yet a separate placement, and the Cladonychiidae were not yet recognized, its species being merged along with Oncopodidae in the Phalangodidae.
Hypothesis L2 (Fig. 13) represented a major step forward, when Loman (1901; 1902) separated the Triaenonychidae as “sister” (a coordinate group) to the other Laniatores, calling it suborder Insidiatores. An expanded usage of the Insidiatores was later recovered by Kury (2003), also including Erebomaster, although formally this is not Loman’s original concept. Pocock (1902), in spite of his critics, followed this arrangement. Loman (1901) also separated Gnomulus from the Phalangodidae.
Hypothesis L3 (Fig. 14) was a further refinement by Loman (1903), who created the names Sterrhonoti (for the Sandokanidae, then called Oncopodidae) and Camptonoti (for the rest of his Laniatores). Setting the Sandokanidae apart proved to be very popular, persisting in the literature for many decades. In the 1920s and early 1930s, a subdivision of the Laniatores became out of fashion. The families were simply listed as coordinate categories (e.g., Roewer 1923).
Hypothesis L4 (Fig. 15): a major breakthrough happened in the mid-1930s, when Hadži (1935) recognized the close relationship between the southern hemisphere Triaenonychidae and the European Cladonychiinae. This group was later resurrected as Travunioidea (Erebomaster + Equitius + Synthetonychia) by Kratochvíl (1958) and as an “expanded” Insidiatores by Kury (2003), but it is currently widely regarded as a paraphylum. Kratochvíl (1958) put all remaining Laniatores as a monophylum (a hitherto unchallenged hypothesis, which he called “Oncopodoidea” and was later named Grassatores by Kury). Kratochvíl also combined Hadži’s group with Mello- Leitão’s special placement for Oncopodidae as sister group of the other Grassatores. Martens (1980) conserved exactly this arrangement, which also appeared in the combined molecular + morphological analyses by Giribet et al. (1999; 2002). This hypothesis was in the second half of the 20th century and at the turn of 21st century.
Hypothesis L5 (Fig. 16): Mello-Leitão (1944) led to an extreme version of Loman’s (1903) attempt to segregate the Oncopodidae and put it at the base of his tree of “oculariate” Laniatores. Hadži’s component Erebomaster + Equitius is ever present, although nested a node above. Šilhavý (1961), who seemed to hold Mello- Leitão’s views in high regard (see, for instance, Šilhavý 1973), followed this scheme, naming the Sandokanidae (then Oncopodidae) as Oncopodomorphi and all non-oncopodid Laniatores as Gonyleptomorphi. Bristowe (1976) did the same, separating the Sandokanidae from the rest, establishing a monofamilial suborder Oncopodines vs. the Laniatores s.s..
Hypothesis L6 (Fig. 17): Shultz elaborated morphological (Shultz 1998) and molecular phylogenetic analyses (Shultz & Regier 2001) that agreed with the notion (Dumitrescu 1976 and Kury 1993) that the “expanded” Insidiatores were diphyletic. However, the branching pattern obtained was different from Kury-Dumitrescu scheme.
Hypothesis L7 (Fig. 18): supported by Kury (2002), Giribet & Kury (2007) and Mendes (2009), also has the Travunioidea and Triaenonychoidea as two clades, but with the sister group sequence inverted in relation to hypothesis O 8. The special position for Sandokanidae is also refuted by this hypothesis; this taxon appears nested within the Grassatores.
Hypothesis L8 (Fig. 19): finally Giribet and collaborators (2010) and Sharma & Giribet (2011) in a molecular analysis also did not recover the “expanded” Insidiatores in full. They also found Sandokanidae nested within Grassatores, although in a different position from hypothesis L7. The need is clear to do a total evidence analysis to reconcile the molecular with the morphological view.
description: Published as part of Kury, Adriano B., 2015, Opiliones are no longer the same — on suprafamilial groups in harvestmen (Arthropoda: Arachnida), pp. 301-340 in Zootaxa 3925 (3) on pages 316-323, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3925.3.1, http://zenodo.org/record/287978