Research Topic
We are interested in fossil arachnids and their relatives, and their significance for understanding arachnid evolution. By studying key fossils and comparing them to their living relatives in the museum collections we are trying to understand where and when groups like spiders, scorpions, harvestmen and ticks first appeared, and how these animals may relate to one another. A number of extinct arachnids may also provide evidence about how these animals diversified and became so
successful.
Research Focus
- The origin of spiders
With more than 50,000 living species, spiders are very successful. Their fossil record extends back more than 300 million years into the Carboniferous, and during this time there appear to have been a range of enigmatic spider-like fossils which are probably close to the origins of this group. A probable late survivor of this radiation is Chimerarachne, a remarkable tailed spider from the ca. 100 million year old Cretaceous Burmese amber. This, and other fossils of both early spiders and their likely relatives are being studied to try and reconstruct the first branches of the spider tree of life. -
The oldest ticks
Ticks are an important group of parasites which feed only on the blood of vertebrates and can transmit a number of diseases. Fossil ticks are very rare, but several important discoveries have been made in Burmese amber which includes a fascinating assemblage of living and extinct genera. These include the oldest records of modern tick genera like Amblyomma, which are typical parasites of reptiles, and Haemaphysalis, which today are usually found on mammals. A remarkable extinct species, Khimaira fossus, appears to be a missing link between the two main living groups of ticks: the hard and soft ticks. We examine their systematics and evolution. -
Amber harvestmen as a model for evolution and biogeography
Despite a large number of modern species harvestmen are relatively unknown as fossils, thus most of their evolutionary and biogeographical history lies hidden. Therefore, we want to study as many new harvestmen fossils as possible from amber sources like e.g. Baltic, Bitterfeld or Burmese amber with the help of computed tomography (Micro CT). These are used to reconstruct the harvestman tree of life and to obtain new information about their past distribution on the palaeocontinents.
This project is supported by an Elsa-Neumann-Scholarship from the Dahlem Research School (Freie Universität Berlin).