Abstract
Plankton samples obtained from estuarine waters of the Colombian Pacific yielded adults specimens of an undescribed species of a paracalanid copepod of the genus Bestiolina. It most closely resembles two Asian species; B.sinica (Shen & Lee, 1966) from China and B.arabica (Ali, Al-Yamani & Prusova, 2007) from the Arabian Gulf. These three species share the absence of spinules on the posterior surfaces of exopod segments of legs 2, 3 and 4. Bestiolinasarae Dorado-Roncancio & Gaviria, sp. n. can be easily separated from B.sinica by the number of spinules on the anterior surface of endopod 2 of legs 2 and 3, and by the absence of spinules on the posterior surface of second endopod of leg 4. It can be distinguished from B.arabica by the presence of spinules on the posterior surface of endopod 2 of same legs (absent in B.arabica), and the size of spinules on the anterior surface of the same segments. The only other species known from the Americas, B.mexicana (Suárez-Morales & Almeyda-Artigas, 2016), can be distinguished from Bestiolinasarae Dorado-Roncancio & Gaviria, sp. n. by the presence of spinules on the posterior surface of the leg 2 first exopodal segment and the morphology of the mandible blade. The morphological and meristic differences to the eight known species of the genus are presented. An identification key to the species of Bestiolina is provided.
Highlights
The family Paracalanidae is represented by seven genera (Razouls et al 2018; Walter and Boxshall 2018) and are among the common estuarine and coastal planktonic copepods of tropical and subtropical latitudes (Suárez-Morales and Almeyda-Artigas 2016)
With the discovery of Bestiolina sarae sp. n., the number of species of the genus is increased to nine, with two of them living in coastal waters of the tropical Americas
It is the first representative of the genus in the Eastern Tropical Pacific and seems to be native to the Panama Bight
Summary
The family Paracalanidae is represented by seven genera (Razouls et al 2018; Walter and Boxshall 2018) and are among the common estuarine and coastal planktonic copepods of tropical and subtropical latitudes (Suárez-Morales and Almeyda-Artigas 2016). The paracalanid genus Bestiolina (Andronov 1991) currently includes eight species and was originally named Bestiola (Andronov 1972). It was subsequently renamed because Bestiola was preoccupied by an insect generic name (Nikolskaya 1963). It can be considered as a relatively recently described genus in relation to the first descriptions of marine planktonic copepod species done at the middle of the 19th century (i.e., Dana 1852; Claus 1863; Boeck 1865; Brady 1899). The lack of information about Bestiolina in the tropical eastern Pacific could be explained by the few faunal surveys done in coastal waters of the region
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