Fig. 1

Geographic locations of sampling sites and phylogenetic relationships of sampled ariid species. a Map excerpt of the Northern Neotropics focusing on Panama and Venezuela. Positions of the filled circles indicate the sampling sites, details can be found in Additional file 1: Table S2. Sampled genera at each location are indicated by the colour of the filled circles. Colour key follows tip label colour in panel (b). b Bayesian inference of phylogenetic relationships within Northern Neotropical Ariidae. Phylogeny modified after Stange et al. [49] and used for phylogenetically informed shape analyses. Bayesian posterior probability (BPP) values for topology were calculated from 1000 trees. Grey bars represent 95% height probability distribution (HPD). The split of the “rest of the world” Ariidae is indicated in the topology for clarification of phylogenetic relatedness to geographically distant members of the ariid family. Other American genera that were not sampled here would appear nested in the presented tree