ddRAD of Hawaiian Ariamnes spiders

The diversification of a host organism can be influenced by both the external environment and its assemblage of microbes. Here, we use a young lineage of spiders, coupled with a chronologically arranged series of volcanic mountains, to determine the evolutionary history of a host and its associated microbial communities, altogether forming the “holobiont”. Using the stick spider Ariamnes waikula (Araneae, Theridiidae) on the island of Hawaiʻi, and outgroup taxa on older islands, we tested whether the host spiders and their microbial constituents have responded in similar ways to the dynamic abiotic environment of the volcanic archipelago. The expectation was that each component of the holobiont (the spider hosts, intracellular endosymbionts, and gut microbiota) should show a similar pattern of sequential colonization from older to younger volcanoes. In order to investigate this, we generated ddRAD data for the host spiders and 16S rRNA gene amplicon data from their microbiota. Results s...