Araniella cucurbitina: the first molecular evidence of a Palearctic species of genus Araniella inhabiting India.

The present study represents first genetic record of single spider species Araniella cucurbitina, genus Araniella from Uttarakhand, India. There are 12 identified species under Araniella genus and they are distributed in Palearctic region. Here, we used known N = 47 (2 from present study and 45 from GenBank) cytochrome oxidase 1 (CO1) sequences of A. cucurbitina representing seven different geographical groups, additionally 23 sequences of eight Araniella species were used for phylogenetic relationship. The CO1 (561 bp) sequences of A. cucurbitina consisted of n = 14 haplotypes, where haplotype 14 (Hap 14) represents Indian species, while all 13 haplotypes (Hap1-13) shared between six A. cucurbitina groups. The overall 'h' and 'π' diversities among seven groups of A. cucurbitina were 0.85291 and 0.00888, respectively, while overall evolutionary divergence was 0.04. The Indian Hap 14, showed minimum sequence divergence (0.02) from Italy and Czech Republic haplotypes (Hap 6), it means it is the closest group compared to others. Evolutionary divergence among eight species of Araniella ranges from 0.003 to 0.114. The maximum likelihood (ML) topology based on 14 haplotypes of A. cucurbitina was divided into two major clades and further two subclades. Furthermore, ML topology between eight species of Araniella was divided into three major clades, where A. cucurbitina and A. proxima clustered together in clade 'A', while six others were present together in clade 'B' and 'C'. This study helps to identify the Indian species from the rest of Araniella species and other cucurbitina population across the world. This study further needs to be on a large scale to know the exact status distribution and molecular phylogeography of this single species of genus Araniella from India.