Figure 107 in Morphological phylogeny of cobweb spiders and their relatives (Araneae, Araneoidea, Theridiidae)

Figure 107. Optimization of kleptoparasitism and araneophagy within Argyrodinae. Kleptoparasitic behaviour unambiguously optimizes at the base of Argyrodinae (clade 32); specialized araneophages have secondarily lost kleptoparasitism. Araneophagy is present in some but probably not all Faiditus species; the behaviour of the species included in this phylogeny is not known. Given the cladogram, the optimization of this character will either be ambiguous (gain and loss, or two gains), or if Faiditus is primitively nonaraneophagous, multiple gains will be inferred. However, given the data at hand, and logical preference for retaining homology of complex features, I prefer the hypothesis that araneophagy arose once and was lost in the strictly kleptoparasitic Argyrodes.