Leonardo Sousa Carvalho

This study reconstructs the phylogeny of Micrathena spiders to infer biogeographic patterns and speciation events in Neotropical regions, finding that Andean orogeny promotes speciation and dispersal occurred before Panama Isthmus closure.

The paper describes the discovery of a new species of Paleoamblypygi and uses it to generate the first molecular phylogeny of whip spiders, showing the importance of relict taxa in divergence time estimation.