The World's First Ever Family Level Arthropod Super Tree!

Nature Talk
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Something I’ve been working on for the better part of a year, my ultimate magnum opus. With well over 100 sources, here is the phylogeny of all* extant families of (pan)arthropods!

Provisional
Provisional899×801 53 KB

Major groups are highlighted as follows, starting from the black portion of the tree going counter clockwise. Lobopodia, Chelicerata, Myriapoda, Oligostraca, Multicrustacea, Copepoda, Allotriocarida (excluding Hexapods), and Hexapoda. This tree contains over 3000 families. My exact methods will be stated in a paper I plan to publish at some point in the near future.

*well, it is possible I might have missed some very obscure families, and there is some disagreement over weather some families should be lumped or split. So technically I might not have gotten truly “all” of them.

You may ask. why did I make this? Well, simple. I think it should exist. There is even species level super trees for most groups of vertebrates. Of course, that is not possible for arthropods at the moment. But family level is a pretty huge first step. I hope such a tree will prove useful for researchers in the future, and if they do use it they are encouraged to adjust and refine the tree as necessary. How many of these families are observed on inaturalist? Probably very few, haha. Any questions or comments are welcome.

I would link a pdf of the tree so you can sift through it yourself and look for your favorite arthropod taxa, but sadly inaturalist you arent able to upload pdfs here. Sad!

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This is incredible. I am not too into at arthropods so I hope someone else will come here and thank you.

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Amazing! How did you deal with disagreements among the different sources as to both tree morphology and branch length? And what did you use to construct the tree?

Also, the best way to share a phylogenetic tree, in addition to an image, is generally a Newick or NEXUS file. We can admire the image, but people can use either of those formats.

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For trees with conflicting topologies, I prioritized the more recent trees in areas of conflict. As for branch length, I didn’t input any specific branch lengths. This is purely a topology with no time calibration. Also, I do have a nexus file, but I don’t think you can post those here. It will be in the sup materials for the paper

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This is brilliant. Amazing work

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Beautiful work! Though unfortunately for spiders at least, changing families is very frequent; e.g., just established is Lathyidae (from Dictynidae) and reestablished Argyronetidae (from Dictynidae). Spiders are a taxonomic mess. :(

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I have both of those families here

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