• A consistent species richness–climate relationship for oaks across the Northern Hemisphere 

      Xu, Xiaoting; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Shrestha, Nawal; Rahbek, Carsten; Wang, Zhiheng (Peer reviewed; Journal article, 2019-04-15)
      Aim Although the effects of climate on species richness are known, regional processes may lead to different species richness–climate relationships across continents resulting in species richness anomalies, especially for ...
    • Contrasting Biogeographic Patterns of Bacterial and Archaeal Diversity in the Top- and Subsoils of Temperate Grasslands 

      Liu, Nana; Hu, Huifeng; Ma, Wenhong; Deng, Ye; Liu, Yuqing; Hao, Baihui; Zhang, Xinying; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Feng, Xiaojuan; Wang, Zhiheng (Peer reviewed; Journal article, 2019-10-01)
      Biogeographic patterns and drivers of soil microbial diversity have been extensively studied in the past few decades. However, most research has focused on the topsoil, while the subsoil is assumed to have microbial diversity ...
    • Converging on the orb: denser taxon sampling elucidates spider phylogeny and new analytical methods support repeated evolution of the orb web 

      Kallal, Robert J.; Kulkarni, Siddharth S; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Benavides, Ligia R.; Arnedo, Miquel A.; Giribet, Gonzalo; Hormiga, Gustavo (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2020)
      High throughput sequencing and phylogenomic analyses focusing on relationships among spiders have both reinforced and upturned long‐standing hypotheses. Likewise, the evolution of spider webs—perhaps their most emblematic ...
    • Deceleration of morphological evolution in a cryptic species complex and its link to paleontological stasis 

      Cerca, Jose; Meyer, Christian; Stateczny, Dave; Siemon, Dominik; Wegbrod, Jana; Purschke, Günter; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Struck, Torsten H (Peer reviewed; Journal article, 2020)
      Morphological stasis or the absence of morphological change is a well-known phenomenon in the paleontological record, yet it is poorly integrated with neontological evidence. Recent evidence suggests that cryptic species ...
    • Dimensions of amphibian alpha diversity in the New World 

      Ochoa-Ochoa, Leticia M.; Mejía-Domínguez, Nancy R.; Velasco, Julián A.; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Marske, Katharine A. (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2020)
      Aim The links between taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity and how these vary geographically are key to understanding how historical and contemporary processes have shaped communities at regional and local ...
    • Drivers of large‐scale geographical variation in sexual systems of woody plants 

      Wang, Yunyun; Lyu, Tong; Shrestha, Nawal; Lyu, Lisha; Li, Yaoqi; Schmid, Bernhard; Freckleton, Robert; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Liu, Shuguang; Hao, Zhanqing; Wang, Zhiheng (Peer reviewed; Journal article, 2020)
      Aim: Sexual systems strongly influence angiosperm evolution and play important roles in community assembly and species responses to climate change. However, geographical variation in proportions of different sexual systems ...
    • The era of reference genomes in conservation genomics 

      Formenti, Giulio; Theissinger, Kathrin; Fernandes, Carlos; Bista, Iliana; Bombarely, Aureliano; Bleidorn, Christoph; Ciofi, Claudio; Crottini, Angelica; Godoy, José A.; Höglund, Jacob; Malukiewicz, Joanna; Mouton, Alice; Oomen, Rebekah Alice; Paez, Sadye; Palsbøll, Per J.; Pampoulie, Christophe; Ruiz-López, María J.; Svardal, Hannes; Theofanopoulou, Constantina; de Vries, Jantina; Waldvogel, Ann-Marie; Zhang, Guojie; Mazzoni, Camila J.; Jarvis, Erich D.; Bálint, Miklós; Čiampor, Fedor; Aghayan, Sargis A.; Alioto, Tyler S.; Almudí, Isabel; Alvarez, Nadir; Alves, Paulo C.; Amorim, Isabel R.; Antunes, Agostinho; Arribas, Paula; Baldrian, Petr; Berg, Paul Ragnar; Bertorelle, Giorgio; Böhne, Astrid; Bonisoli-Alquati, Andrea; Boštjančić, Ljudevit L.; Boussau, Bastien; Breton, Catherine M.; Buzan, Elena; Campos, Paula F.; Carreras, Carlos; Castro, L. Filipe; Chueca, Luis J.; Conti, Elena; Cook-Deegan, Robert; Croll, Daniel; Cunha, Mónica V.; Delsuc, Frédéric; Dennis, Alice B.; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Gilbert, Marcus Thomas Pius; Heintzman, Peter D.; Jakobsen, Kjetill Sigurd; Jentoft, Sissel; Matschiner, Michael (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2022)
      Progress in genome sequencing now enables the large-scale generation of reference genomes. Various international initiatives aim to generate reference genomes representing global biodiversity. These genomes provide unique ...
    • Geographical patterns in phylogenetic diversity of Chinese woody plants and its application for conservation planning 

      Cai, Hongyu; Lyu, Lisha; Shrestha, Nawal; Tang, Zhiyao; Su, Xiangyan; Xu, Xiaoting; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Wang, Zhiheng (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2021)
      Aim Biodiversity hotspots are widely used as conservation priorities to preserve the tree of life. However, many conservation practices identify biodiversity hotspots without considering phylogenetic diversity (PD), which ...
    • Global distribution and evolutionary transitions of angiosperm sexual systems 

      Wang, Yunyun; Luo, Ao; Lyu, Tong; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Xu, Xiaoting; Freckleton, Robert P.; Yaoqui, Li; Su, Xiangyan; Li, Yichao; Liu, Yunpeng; Sandanov, Denis; Li, Qingjun; Hao, Zhanqing; Liu, Shuguang; Wang, Zhiheng (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2021)
      Angiosperm sexual systems are fundamental to the evolution and distribution of plant diversity, yet spatiotemporal patterns in angiosperm sexual systems and their drivers remain poorly known. Using data on sexual systems ...
    • Global patterns of species richness of the holarctic alpine herb Saxifraga: The role of temperature and habitat heterogeneity 

      Liu, Lian; Xu, Xiaoting; Zhang, Lei; Li, Yaoqi; Shrestha, Nawal; Neves, Danilo M; Wang, Qinggang; Chang, Hong; Su, Xiangyan; Liu, Yunpeng; Wu, Jianyong; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Wang, Zhiheng; Jianquan, Liu (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2022)
      The effects of contemporary climate, habitat heterogeneity and long-term climate change on species richness are well studied for woody plants in forest ecosystems, but poorly understood for herbaceous plants, especially ...
    • Interrogating genomic-scale data to resolve recalcitrant nodes in the Spider Tree of Life 

      Kulkarni, Siddharth; Kallal, Robert J.; Wood, Hannah; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Giribet, Gonzalo; Hormiga, Gustavo (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2020)
      Genome-scale data sets are converging on robust, stable phylogenetic hypotheses for many lineages; however, some nodes have shown disagreement across classes of data. We use spiders (Araneae) as a system to identify the ...
    • Microhabitat change drives diversification in pholcid spiders 

      Eberle, Jonas; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Valdez-Mondragón, Alejandro; Huber, Bernhard A. (Peer reviewed; Journal article, 2018-09-19)
      Background: Microhabitat changes are thought to be among the main drivers of diversification. However, this conclusion is mostly based on studies on vertebrates. Here, we investigate the influence of microhabitat on ...
    • Mitochondrial Genome Evolution in Annelida—A Systematic Study on Conservative and Variable Gene Orders and the Factors Influencing its Evolution 

      Struck, Torsten H; Golombek, Anja; Hoesel, Christoph; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Elgetany, Asmaa H. (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2023)
      The mitochondrial genomes of Bilateria are relatively conserved in their protein-coding, rRNA, and tRNA gene complement, but the order of these genes can range from very conserved to very variable depending on the taxon. ...
    • Monophyly, Taxon Sampling, and the Nature of Ranks in the Classification of Orb-Weaving Spiders (Araneae: Araneoidea) 

      Kallal, Robert J.; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Arnedo, Miquel A.; Giribet, Gonzalo; Hormiga, Gustavo (Peer reviewed; Journal article, 2020)
      We address some of the taxonomic and classification changes proposed by Kuntner et al. (2019) in a comparative study on the evolution of sexual size dimorphism in nephiline spiders. Their proposal to recircumscribe araneids ...
    • Multiple paths toward repeated phenotypic evolution in the spiny-leg adaptive radiation (Tetragnatha; Hawai'i) 

      Cerca, José; Cotoras, Darko; Santander, Cindy G.; Bieker, Vanessa Carina; Hutchins, Leke; Morin-Lagos, Jaime; Prada, Carlos; Kennedy, Susan M.; Krehenwinkel, Henrik; Rominger, Andrew J.; Meier, Joana Isabel; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Struck, Torsten H; Gillespie, Rosemary G (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2023)
      The repeated evolution of phenotypes provides clear evidence for the role of natural selection in driving evolutionary change. However, the evolutionary origin of repeated phenotypes can be difficult to disentangle as it ...
    • Phylogenetic conservatism and biogeographic affinity influence woody plant species richness–climate relationships in eastern Eurasia 

      Su, Xiangyan; Shrestha, Nawal; Xu, Xiaoting; Sandanov, Denis; Wang, Qinggang; Wang, Siyang; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Wang, Zhiheng (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2020)
      Mechanisms underlying species richness patterns remain a central yet controversial issue in biology. Climate has been regarded as a major determinant of species richness. However, the relative influences of different ...
    • The phylogeny of pholcid spiders: a critical evaluation of relationships suggested by molecular data (Araneae, Pholcidae) 

      Huber, Bernhard A.; Eberle, Jonas; Dimitrov, Dimitar (Peer reviewed; Journal article, 2018-10-10)
      With almost 600 species, the latest molecular phylogeny of pholcid spiders (Eberle et al. 2018, BMC Evolutionary Biology) more than triples the largest previously available molecular phylogeny of the family. At the level ...
    • Phylogeny of the orb-weaving spider family Araneidae(Araneae: Araneoidea) 

      Scharff, Nikolaj; Coddington, Jonathan A.; Blackledge, Todd A.; Agnarsson, Ingi; Framenau, Volker W.; Szüts, Tamás; Hayashi, Cheryl Y.; Dimitrov, Dimitar (Peer reviewed; Journal article, 2020)
      We present a new phylogeny of the spider family Araneidae based on five genes (28S, 18S, COI, H3 and 16S) for 158 taxa, identified and mainly sequenced by us. This includes 25 outgroups and 133 araneid ingroups representing ...
    • Relationships Between Soil Microbial Diversities Across an Aridity Gradient in Temperate Grasslands: Soil Microbial Diversity Relationships 

      Liu, Nana; Hu, Huifeng; Ma, Wenhong; Deng, Ye; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Wang, Qinggang; Shrestha, Nawal; Su, Xiangyan; Feng, Kai; Liu, Yuqing; Hao, Baihui; Zhang, Xinying; Feng, Xiaojuan; Wang, Zhiheng (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2022)
      Soil microbes assemble in highly complex and diverse microbial communities, and microbial diversity patterns and their drivers have been studied extensively. However, diversity correlations and co-occurrence patterns between ...
    • The Tetragnatha kauaiensis Genome Sheds Light on the Origins of Genomic Novelty in Spiders 

      Cerca, José; Armstrong, Ellie E.; Vizueta, Joel; Fernández, Rosa; Dimitrov, Dimitar; Petersen, Bent; Prost, Stefan; Rozas, Julio; Petrov, Dmitri; Gillespie, Rosemary G. (Journal article; Peer reviewed, 2021)
      Spiders (Araneae) have a diverse spectrum of morphologies, behaviors, and physiologies. Attempts to understand the genomic-basis of this diversity are often hindered by their large, heterozygous, and AT-rich genomes with ...