Aim: A wholistic biogeographical reconstruction should combine a phylogeny with specifics of organismal biology, plate tectonics and consequent probabilities of historic dispersal events. Here, we demonstrate this approach by reconstructing the geographical origin and sequence of intercontinental colonization of the golden orbweaving spiders, a global clade. We test two alternative hypotheses about their ancestral range. Due to the highest contemporary species diversity in Africa, the ‘Out of Africa’ hypothesis predicts the Afrotropics as their most likely ancestral area. The alternative, ‘Out of West Burma’ hypothesis aims to explain a Burmese amber fossil as stem nephilid. Because the West Burma block probably detached from Australia, then rafted towards Laurasia, either on its own or with India, this hypothesis predicts either Australasia or Indomalaya (or both) as the ancestral area.Location: Worldwide.Taxon: Golden orbweaving spiders, family Nephilidae.Methods: We construct an expanded phylogeny of nephilid spiders and apply RASP (Reconstruct Ancestral State in Phylogenies) to infer their global biogeographical history. We fit the data to six integrated biogeographical models: DEC, DIVALIKE, BAYAREALIKE and their +j variants. We fine‐tune the analysis by evaluating varying probabilities of dispersal between geographical areas throughout the clade's evolutionary history. We use the physical distance between the areas as a proxy for dispersal probabilities, thus accounting for plate tectonics.Results: The best supported model reconstructs both Australasia and Indomalaya as ancestral area. In several parts of the phylogeny, these areas persist for the estimated 130‐million‐year evolutionary history. However, numerous intercontinental shifts in nephilid biogeographical history are also inferred. Since nephilid origins are clearly Gondwanan, our study supports the interpretations that Burmese amber contains Gondwanan biota.Main conclusions: These results are consistent with the Out of West Burma hypothesis but reject the Out of Africa hypothesis. That certain clades persist in their ancestral ranges while others may shift continents aligns well with the known nephilid biology. Our methodological approach that assesses organismal specific dispersal probabilities through concrete distances measured though time slices of the Earth's history can be applied to biogeographical reconstruction of any lineage.

Reconstructing biogeographic history is challenging when dispersal biology of studied species is poorly understood, and they have undergone a complex geological past. Here, we reconstruct the origin and subsequent dispersal of coin spiders (Nephilidae: Herennia Thorell), a clade of 14 species inhabiting tropical Asia and Australasia. Specifically, we test whether the all-Asian range of Herennia multipuncta is natural vs. anthropogenic. We combine Anchored Hybrid Enrichment phylogenomic and classical marker phylogenetic data to infer species and population phylogenies. Our biogeographical analyses follow two alternative dispersal models: ballooning vs. walking. Following these assumptions and considering measured distances between geographical areas through temporal intervals, these models infer ancestral areas based on varying dispersal probabilities through geological time. We recover a wide ancestral range of Herennia including Australia, mainland SE Asia and the Philippines. Both models agree that H. multipuncta internal splits are generally too old to be influenced by humans, thereby implying its natural colonisation of Asia, but suggest quite different colonisation routes of H. multipuncta populations. The results of the ballooning model are more parsimonious as they invoke fewer chance dispersals over large distances. We speculate that coin spiders’ ancestor may have lost the ability to balloon, but that H. multipuncta regained it, thereby colonising and maintaining larger areas.

Heterogeneity in species diversity is driven by the dynamics of speciation and extinction, potentially influenced by organismal and environmental factors. Here, we explore macroevolutionary trends on a phylogeny of golden orbweavers (spider family Nephilidae). Our initial inference detects heterogeneity in speciation and extinction, with accelerated extinction rates in the extremely sexually size dimorphic Nephila and accelerated speciation in Herennia, a lineage defined by highly derived, arboricolous webs, and pronounced island endemism. We evaluate potential drivers of this heterogeneity that relate to organisms and their environment. Primarily, we test two continuous organismal factors for correlation with diversification in nephilids: phenotypic extremeness (female and male body length, and sexual size dimorphism as their ratio) and dispersal propensity (through range sizes as a proxy). We predict a bell-shaped relationship between factor values and speciation, with intermediate phenotypes exhibiting highest diversification rates. Analyses using SSE-class models fail to support our two predictions, suggesting that phenotypic extremeness and dispersal propensity cannot explain patterns of nephilid diversification. Furthermore, two environmental factors (tropical versus subtropical and island versus continental species distribution) indicate only marginal support for higher speciation in the tropics. Although our results may be affected by methodological limitations imposed by a relatively small phylogeny, it seems that the tested organismal and environmental factors play little to no role in nephilid diversification. In the phylogeny of golden orbweavers, the recent hypothesis of universal diversification dynamics may be the simplest explanation of macroevolutionary patterns.

Among terrestrial animals, spiders exhibit the most striking examples of sexual size dimorphism (SSD) but better understanding of its evolution requires improved taxonomy and phylogeny. Many sexually dimorphic spiders lack adequate description, phylogenetic placement, and natural history observations. In South Africa, we documented the natural history of a poorly known spider, Megaraneus gabonensis (Lucas, 1858), with extreme, female-biased SSD (eSSD, female:male approximately 4:1). Here, we redescribe M. gabonensis, place Megaraneus Lawrence, 1968 phylogenetically for the first time, assess whether the observed eSSD represents an independent evolutionary origin, and test whether the macroevolutionary pattern is better explained by male dwarfism or female gigantism. The recovered phylogenetic placement of Megaraneus in the araneid ‘backobourkiines’, a clade previously considered as restricted to East Asia and Australasia, extends the range of this clade to the Afrotropics. We find that eSSD was present in the common ancestor of the ‘backobourkiines’, with further increases in female body length occurring independently in Megaraneus, Backobourkia Framenau, Dupérré, Blackledge & Vink, 2010, and the currently misplaced Parawixia dehaani (Doleschall, 1859). We conclude that the evolution of eSSD reflects a complex pattern of sex-specific size changes across spider phylogeny, but that in Megaraneus it results from female gigantism.

Accurate pre-harvest prediction of crop yield informs variety selection, optimizes management, and accelerates breeding. As potato is the world’s leading non-grain staple, here we evaluate a diverse panel of varieties in a three-year field trial across five European locations. Canopy development and environmental parameters are monitored throughout the growing season using drone-based imaging, in-field sensors and gene expression measurements, while tuber yield and quality traits are quantified at harvest. We show that these data enable the identification of climate-resilient, high-yielding genotypes and support the development of machine learning models that explain over 80% of yield variation in independent test sets. Strikingly, measurements collected within the first two months after planting achieve predictive performance comparable to models trained on full-season data. Model interrogation further shows that over 70% of yield variation can already be predicted based on a simple five-parameter linear equation. Our framework thus demonstrates the potential of integrative field phenotyping and data-driven modeling to improve variety selection across heterogeneous environments.