Data from: The evolutionary history of Sinopoda spiders (Sparassidae: Heteropodinae): Out of the Himalayas and down the mountain slopes

Himalayan orogeny and consequent climatic changes, such as the
strengthening of the Asian monsoon, are considered as two main
drivers in shaping local biogeography. The
mountainous Sinopoda spiders, which
are widely distributed in East Asia and Southeast
Asia and especially abundant in the mountains near the Himalayas,
represent an ideal model lineage
for investigating Himalayan
biogeography. This is due to
their high diversity, limited dispersal ability, and
wide elevational distribution, ranging from sea
level to 3500 meters. We investigated the evolutionary history of
Sinopoda spiders, focusing on ecological, molecular, and
morphological traits in relation to local geological events
and fluctuations in Neogene (23.0–2.6 Ma) Asian monsoon
patterns. Distribution modeling results show that extant
Sinopoda spiders are sensitive to humidity fluctuations. They are mainly
distributed in two distinct habitats: areas with moderate precipitation at
high altitudes (relatively cold) and areas with high precipitation at low
altitude (relatively warm). The biogeographical and elevation
reconstruction analyses show that as the Himalayas rose and the Asian
monsoon intensified Sinopoda spiders (Sparassidae: Heteropodinae)
moved out of Himalayas (c. 18.1 Ma) and then ‘down’ the rising
mountain slopes (c. 9.6 Ma). We then see a secondary return to the
mountains (c. 3.3 Ma) as the severity of the East Asian monsoon decreased.
We hypothesize that our ‘out of Himalaya’ dispersal pattern hypothesis
will also apply to closely related spider groups with limited ballooning
ability (e.g. Lycosidae, Thomisidae) or other organisms with low vagility
(such as herpetofauna) that are sensitive to humidity and possess similar
geographical distributions.