Abstract
A specimen of Solaropsidae from the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (Philadelphia, USA) was recognised as a potential new species based on shell morphology. With support from a multi-locus molecular phylogenetic analysis, a new species is described here: Solaropsis penthesileae sp. nov. It is native to the Amazon Rainforest in Pará state, northern Brazil, and it is closely related to S. nimbus (Simone). It differs in its more discoid shell, with a wider body whorl that bears a stronger median angulation in its lower spire. The specimen was collected in 1998 and is an example of the long shelf-life invertebrates may have in museum collections before they are identified and formally described. It is also a reminder of the importance of those collections for biodiversity studies.
Highlights
The discovery of new species mostly happens not in the field, but rather in museum collection stores (Allmon 1994, Kemp 2015)
The specimen was remarkably similar to Solaropsis nimbus (Simone, 2010), described from the northernmost region of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest and of a very unique morphology within the Solaropsidae (Simone 2010, Calcutt et al 2020)
The 28S fragment amplifies together with the ITS2 marker, which is present in the GenBank record though it was not used for the phylogenetic analysis
Summary
The discovery of new species mostly happens not in the field, but rather in museum collection stores (Allmon 1994, Kemp 2015). There is an average of 21 years of the so-called “shelf-life” separating the time when a specimen is first collected from the formal description and naming of a new species in a scientific publication (Fontaine et al 2012). The specimen was remarkably similar to Solaropsis nimbus (Simone, 2010), described from the northernmost region of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest and of a very unique morphology within the Solaropsidae (Simone 2010, Calcutt et al 2020). A combination of morphological characters and genetic data is used to support the description of a new species of the Solaropsidae
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