E8: New Species— of daddy longlegs named after a Warhammer 40k character,a Twitter challenge for listeners, and new genera and families!

Dr. Shahan Derkarabetian is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. He talks to us about his upcoming paper to be published in the next issue of Invertebrate Systematics! Dr. Derkarabetian and his coauthors describe not only two new species, but each new species is in a new genus, and each genus is in a new family! Moreover, we talk about how these species got their names, including a new species named after Abaddon the Despoiler in Warhammer 40,000, acquiring DNA from specimens collected at the time of the signing of the truce of the American Civil War, and why people should care about these small predators of the leaf litter! Dr. Derkarabetian also issues a Twitter Challenge! He wants listeners to send him pictures of daddy longlegs from around the world and he’ll try to identify all of them! Tag him with @sderkarabetian and he’ll try to ID your daddy longlegs! Listen to the challenge at the end of the podcast.

The title of the paper is “Phylogenomic re-evaluation of Triaenonychoidea (Opiliones: Laniatores), and systematics of Tiaenonychidae, including new families, genera, and species.” The paper is available free as Open Access through the month of March: https://www.publish.csiro.au/IS/IS20047

To learn more about Dr. Derkarabetian, follow him on Twitter, @sderkarabetian.