Abstract
Tardigrades constitute one of the most important group in the challenging Antarctic terrestrial ecosystem. Living in various habitats, tardigrades play major roles as consumers and decomposers in the trophic networks of Antarctic terrestrial and freshwater environments; yet we still know little about their biodiversity. The Eutardigrada is a species rich class, for which the eggshell morphology is one of the key morphological characters. Tardigrade egg morphology shows a diverse appearance, and it is known that, despite rare, intraspecific variation is caused by seasonality, epigenetics, and external environmental conditions. Here we report Dactylobiotus ovimutans sp. nov. from King George Island, Antarctica. Interestingly, we observed a range of eggshell morphologies from the new species, although the population was cultured under controlled laboratory condition. Thus, seasonality, environmental conditions, and food source are eliminated, leaving an epigenetic factor as a main cause for variability in this case.
Highlights
SEM observations of eggs from Signy Island have been conducted in British Antarctic Survey (BAS) following ref. 75
This published work and the nomenclatural acts it contains have been registered in ZooBank, the online registration system for the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN)
The LSID for this publication is: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:362EE4A0‒A6F2‒4F78‒AF65‒EA87028EA1DD
Summary
-Taxonomic account Phylum: Tardigrada Doyère, 184051 Class: Eutardigrada Richters, 192652 Order: Parachela Schuster, Nelson, Grigarick and Christenberry, 198044 Superfamily: Macrobiotoidea Thulin, 1928 in Marley, McInnes and Sands, 201153 Family: Murrayidae Guidetti, Rebecchi and Bertolani, 200054 Genus: Dactylobiotus Schuster, 198044 Type species: Dactylobiotus grandipes (Schuster, Toftner and Grigarick, 1977)[55] Dactylobiotus ovimutans sp. nov. Species which belong to the genus Dactylobiotus are characterized in having the same number of macroplacoids, similar shape of AISM and bulbous expansion, and cuticular bars between claws, but differ mostly in the eggshell morphology[38,39,65,66,67,68,69]. Dactylobiotus caldarellai (measurement data72), recorded from Punta Arenas, Chile, is similar to the new species in having well-developed oral armature, it is not clear whether the FBT at the base of the www.nature.com/scientificreports peribuccal lamellae is present[50]. Dactylobiotus luci (measurement data65), reported from Uganda, is similar to the new species in having well-developed oral cavity armature, but apparently lacks the FBT at the base of the peribuccal lamellae. Eggshell has a discrete ring of pores around the process in the new species and random pores between the processes in Dac. dervizi
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