The rise and diversification of spidroins in the deep-time evolution of spiders.

Four distinct new spidroin types with atypical sequence characteristics are widespread across true spiders, and their number is linked to higher speciation rates.

• Why it matters: The study tests whether molecular changes in silk proteins connect to spider diversification, using a dated phylogenetic framework rather than undated comparisons.
• What they did: Using genomic and transcriptomic data, the authors exhaustively identified spidroin genes via an iterative phylogenetic pipeline, then applied phylogenetic generalized linear mixed models and phylogenetic generalized least squares analyses.
• The result: State speciation and extinction analyses show aggregate gland presence is linked to a higher diversification rate, while speciation rate depends on ampullate-gland-associated atypical spidroin types, silk gland types, total spidroin copies, and total spidroin types.

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