<i>Araniella cucurbitina</i>: the first molecular evidence of a Palearctic species of genus <i>Araniella</i> inhabiting India

The present study represents first genetic record of single spider species <i>Araniella cucurbitina</i>, genus <i>Araniella</i> from Uttarakhand, India. There are 12 identified species under <i>Araniella</i> genus and they are distributed in Palearctic region. Here, we used known N = 47 (2 from present study and 45 from GenBank) cytochrome oxidase 1 (CO1) sequences of <i>A. cucurbitina</i> representing seven different geographical groups, additionally 23 sequences of eight <i>Araniella</i> species were used for phylogenetic relationship. The CO1 (561 bp) sequences of <i>A. cucurbitina</i> consisted of <i>n</i> = 14 haplotypes, where haplotype 14 (Hap 14) represents Indian species, while all 13 haplotypes (Hap1–13) shared between six <i>A. cucurbitina</i> groups. The overall ‘h’ and ‘π’ diversities among seven groups of <i>A. cucurbitina</i> were 0.85291 and 0.00888, respectively, while overall evolutionary divergence was 0.04. The Indian Hap 14, showed minimum sequence divergence (0.02) from Italy and Czech Republic haplotypes (Hap 6), it means it is the closest group compared to others. Evolutionary divergence among eight species of <i>Araniella</i> ranges from 0.003 to 0.114. The maximum likelihood (ML) topology based on 14 haplotypes of <i>A. cucurbitina</i> was divided into two major clades and further two subclades. Furthermore, ML topology between eight species of <i>Araniella</i> was divided into three major clades, where <i>A. cucurbitina</i> and <i>A. proxima</i> clustered together in clade ‘A’, while six others were present together in clade ‘B’ and ‘C’. This study helps to identify the Indian species from the rest of <i>Araniella</i> species and other <i>cucurbitina</i> population across the world. This study further needs to be on a large scale to know the exact status distribution and molecular phylogeography of this single species of genus <i>Araniella</i> from India.