Embryonic and nymphal RNA seq data for the cellar spider Pholcus phalangioides

The spider Pholcus phalangioides is characterised by the development of extremely long walking legs and belongs to the haplogyne spider group. Haplogyne spiders are phylogenetically the sister group of the entelegyne spiders, which are in focus of developmental research, especially the main spider model Parasteatoda tepidariorum. We established Pholcus phalangioides as a comparative spider model for studying embryonic development with focus on appendage formation and growth. We sequenced a mixture of all embryonic stages as well as different nymphal tissues (including legs, prosoma and opisthosoma) for de novo transcriptome assembly to investigate the special walking leg development in comparison to other arthropods.