Genome Sizes of Spiders

Spiders represent a diverse and familiar group of animals, but to date no information has been made available regarding their genome sizes. Arachnids in general have been almost entirely overlooked, and are currently represented by a single tick in the animal genome size data set. The present study provides new genome size estimates for 115 species of spiders from 19 families (all from the infraorder Araneomorphae), thereby adding considerably to the coverage of these arthropods. No clear-cut patterns of variation were detectable even with this relatively large data set, but some interesting avenues for future research have been illuminated by this preliminary survey.