Araneidae

Breitling, Rainer, 2021, A completely resolved phylogenetic tree of British spiders (Arachnida: Araneae), Ecologica Montenegrina 46, pp. 1-51 : 8

Araneidae (and Zygiellidae sensu Wunderlich 2004 = Phonognathidae sensu Kuntner et al. 2019 )

The relationships of species in this group are based on the analyses of Kallal & Hormiga (2019), Kallal et al. (2020), and Scharff et al. (2020). The genus-level backbone closely follows the results of Scharff et al. (2020), as this study has the densest coverage of relevant species. Kallal et al. (2020) differ only in details, such as the relative branching order of Mangora , Argiope and the clade containing Cyclosa at the base of the tree, and the placement of Hypsosinga as sister of the Araneus diadematus group, rather than of Nuctenea + Larinioides . The internal topology within Araniella follows Spasojevic et al. (2016); for other genera the relationships are informed by barcode data, which are available for all species. The placement of Zilla is only very weakly supported; it is based on Tanikawa’s assessment that this genus is closely related to Plebs / Eriophora ( Tanikawa 2000) , which in the tree of Scharff et al. are closely related to Singa .

The genus Araneus in the traditional sense is clearly polyphyletic. The placement of Araneus (s.str.) angulatus is based on barcode similarity to A. bicentenarius , which is placed apart from A. diadematus and its relatives in Scharff et al. 2020. The close relationship between A. angulatus and A. bicentenarius is confirmed by their morphological similarity, which led earlier authors to consider bicentenarius a variant of A. angulatus ( Levi 1971) . The available genus name for the A. diadematus group would be Epeira , and this is used in the tree.

The placement of the Atea species is unclear. Their barcode sequences indicate that they are not closely related to A. angulatus or the A. diadematus group of the highly polyphyletic Araneus s. lat.; as the genus Atea has historically often been placed close to Agalenatea , the two British species are placed there, but with some reluctance, as there seems to be no convincing evidence for a close relationship between the two genera.