Abstract
Four new species and one new subspecies of tateid freshwater gastropods are described from the north of the South Island of New Zealand, Catapyrgus jami sp. nov., Opacuincola lisannea sp. nov., O. gretathunbergae sp. nov., O. mete kahurangi ssp. nov. and Obtusopyrgus farri sp. nov. The species are integratively defined based on a combination of shell morphological, anatomical and mitochondrial DNA data. Morphological and anatomical data were generated by morphometrics, scanning electron microscopy, as well as micro-computed tomography. The genetic data were basis of phylogenetic analyses and incorporated into the diagnoses. The new taxa occur in springs or spring-like habitats, i.e., shallow, slow-flowing sections of small streams except for O. mete kahurangi subsp. nov., which was collected from rough rocks in a river, where the snails sat in small depressions. None of the species exceeded 2.75 mm in length. Opacuincola gretathunbergae sp. nov. and Obtusopyrgus farri sp. nov. are pigmented and true crenobionts, while C. jami sp. nov. and the sympatric Opacuincola lisannea sp. nov. have eyes of reduced size and lack epidermal pigment, hence, probably dwell in the transitional zone of epigean and groundwaters.
Highlights
Tateidae is an extremely diverse family of minute aquatic gastropods occurring in Australasia from Sulawesi over New Guinea to Australia and Tasmania as well as on Pacific islands and island groupsEuropean Journal of Taxonomy 731: 71–96 (2021)including, Lord Howe Island, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Fiji and the Austral Islands
The vast majority of the over 300 species lives in fresh water, only six dwell in brackish waters – one of them, the notorious Potamopyrgus antipodarum (Gray, 1843), which is native to New Zealand and has invaded Australia, Europe, North and South America as well as Japan, facultatively (Ponder 1988, 2019; Haase 2008; Alonso & Castro-Díez 2012)
For the four new species, we identified diagnostic molecular characters based on the alignments of c oxidase subunit I gene (COI) (Electronic Supplement 1) and 16S (Electronic Supplement 2) using QUIDDICH (Kühn & Haase 2020), a package written in R (R Core Team 2020)
Summary
Tateidae is an extremely diverse family of minute aquatic gastropods occurring in Australasia from Sulawesi over New Guinea to Australia and Tasmania as well as on Pacific islands and island groupsEuropean Journal of Taxonomy 731: 71–96 (2021)including, Lord Howe Island, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Fiji and the Austral Islands. In New Zealand, even entire lineages of genera have restricted ranges conserving historical biogeographic information extending back to the mid Miocene (Haase et al 2007a). Against this background, it is not surprising that unknown species are being discovered at a considerable rate, most of them in the past 30 years (Ponder 2019). It is not surprising that unknown species are being discovered at a considerable rate, most of them in the past 30 years (Ponder 2019) This is a consequence of the availability of molecular methods allowing the identification of cryptic species and genera among these small-sized animals (e.g., Haase 2008; Zielske & Haase 2015). Though, that DNA comparisons are not a cure-all as in particular young speciation events will not be reflected in mtDNA commonly used to delimitate species (for examples see, e.g., Haase 2008), which is why we advocate the integration of several approaches in taxonomy (Dayrat 2005; Haase et al 2007b)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
