Separation of Anthalona gen. n. from Alona Baird, 1843 (Branchiopoda: Cladocera: Anomopoda): morphology and evolution of scraping stenothermic alonines
Author
DAMME, KAY VAN
Author
SINEV, ARTEM YU
Author
DUMONT, HENRI J.
text
Zootaxa
2011
2011-05-11
2875
1
1
64
http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.2875.1.1
journal article
10.11646/zootaxa.2875.1.1
11755334
Future of
Anthalona
studies
The taxonomic situation of
Anthalona
gen. n.
remains complex.
A. lineolata
from
China
and
A. alonopsiformis
from the
Philippines
still need evaluation. We currently count seven species of
Anthalona
, but the genus will grow larger. Records of
Anthalona
appear as
Alona verrucosa
in literature worldwide and more research of East Asian (e.g.,
Rajapaksa & Fernando 1982
;
Dumont & Van De Velde 1977
), Australian and African
Anthalona
are likely to reveal additional species. In particular, status of Australian and South East Asian populations should be examined further; we did not study these regions sufficiently although the
A. verrucosa
-group is common here and there is no name available for the Australian populations, which may well be different from
A. obtusa
n. sp.
(or more species may be present). We did encounter more new species that were not incorporated in this study. Brief examination of specimens from
Nepal
, samples of
Dumont & Van De Velde (1977)
for example, showed that these populations cannot be assigned to any of the species described herein. Furthermore, during finalization of this manuscript, we encountered two clearly different, unnamed species of
Anthalona
, one from
Thailand
(Sinev, pers. obs.) and another from
Brazil
(from Amazon; A. Ghidini, pers. obs.). So, even in South America, new findings should not be surprising.
Anthalona
gen. n.
is therefore more speciose than presented here. More data on ecology should also be gathered; in particular sympatry of the Neotropical species
A. acuta
and
A. verrucosa
(and even
A. brandorffi
) is interesting, to study niche separation of sympatric chydorids in a single small pool with externally different characters.