Data from: Development and patterning of a highly versatile visual system in spiders

Visual systems provide a key interface between organisms and their
surroundings, and have evolved in many forms to perform diverse functions
across the animal kingdom. Spiders exhibit a range of visual abilities and
ecologies, the diversity of which is underpinned by a highly versatile,
modular visual system architecture. This typically includes eight eyes of
two developmentally distinct types, but the number, size, location, and
function of the eyes can vary dramatically between lineages. Previous
studies of visual system development in spiders have confirmed that many
components of the retinal determination gene (RDG) network are conserved
with other arthropods, but so far, comparative studies among spiders are
lacking. We characterised visual system development in seven species of
spiders representing a range of morphologies, visual ecologies, and
phylogenetic positions, to determine how these diverse configurations are
formed, and how they might evolve. Combining synchrotron radiation
tomography, transcriptomics, in situ hybridisation, and selection
analyses, we characterise the repertoires and expression of key RDGs in
relation to adult morphology. We identify key molecular players,
timepoints, and developmental events that may contribute to adult
diversity, in particular the molecular and developmental underpinnings of
eye size, number, position, and identity across spiders