Romain Sabroux

University of Bristol | UB · Bristol Palaeobiology Group

Background The sea spiders (Pycnogonida Latreille, 1810) of the Hunsrück Slate (Lower Devonian, ~400 million years ago) are iconic in their abundance, exquisite pyritic preservation, and in their distinctive body plan compared to extant sea spiders (Pantopoda Gerstäcker, 1863). Consequently, the Hunsrück sea spiders are important in understanding t...

The three‐dimensionally preserved Haliestes dasos from the Silurian (Wenlock) Lagerstätte is the most complete fossil sea spider and the oldest unambiguous pycnogonid known from the fossil record. The discovery of two new specimens to add to the holotype reveals new features including proximal annulations of the appendages and segmentation of the t...

Three species of sea spider (Arthropoda, Pycnogonida) have been described from the Middle Jurassic (Callovian) Konservat‐Lagerstätte of La Voulte‐sur‐Rhône: Palaeopycnogonides gracilis , Colossopantopodus boissinensis and Palaeoendeis elmii . These fossils were initially attributed to three extant families or superfamilies, justifying their use as...

The phylogeny of sea spiders has been debated for more than a century. Despite several molecular studies in the last twenty years, interfamilial relationships remain uncertain. In the present study, relationships within Pycnogonida are examined in the light of a new dataset composed of 160 mitochondrial genomes (including 152 new sequences) and 130...

This study presents the inventory of sea spiders (Pycnogonida) sampled during the Madibenthos Expedition in Martinique (West Indies). Species were discriminated leaning on morphological and molecular data. A total of 761 specimens are classified in 72 species, 16 genera and nine families. Thirteen new species are described: Ammothella dirbergi sp....

The marine biodiversity of the tropical northwestern Atlantic (TNWA) has been explored by many great naturalist expeditions. After more than one century of marine exploration, how well do we know its biodiversity? As a poorly studied taxon, sea spiders (Arthropoda: Pycnogonida Latreille, 1810) are excellent candidates to address this issue. Here, w...

Sea spiders (Pycnogonida) are strange arthropods characterized by a unique morphology, including reduced body, egg-carrying appendages and a proboscis. This peculiar body plan dates at least as early as the first undoubted occurrence of the group, 425 million years ago in the Silurian. All extant species belong to the order Pantopoda, characterized...

Les pycnogonides sont une classe d’arthropodes marins comptant plus de 1 400 espèces, et dont nous connaissons mal la diversité et l’histoire évolutive. Cette thèse pluridisciplinaire sur les pycnogonides tropicaux s’articule autour de quatre axes de recherche : (i) description de neuf fossiles de Solnhofen (Jurassique supérieur), grâce à une nouve...

The family Ammotheidae is the most diversified group of the class Pycnogonida, with 297 species described in 20 genera. Its monophyly and intergeneric relationships have been highly debated in previous studies. Here, we investigated the phylogeny of Ammotheidae using specimens from poorly studied areas. We sequenced the mitochondrial gene encoding...