Limno-terrestrial tardigrades of Argentina had been studied starting in 1908 and for a long time by European researchers, most frequently in the Patagonian region (incl. the Land of Fire). Starting during the 1980s, Claps, Rossi and collaborators published many surveys, studying other regions also, but with taxonomic criteria at that time. Since the 2000s, methodical and continuous studies using more modern criteria, have been carried out at the National University of La Pampa, contributing to the faunistic, taxonomic and ecological knowledge (including new species descriptions). This paper provides a comprehensive list of the limno-terrestrial tardigrade fauna reported from Argentina, with pertinent evaluations, owing to a careful study of every pertinent piece of literature since 1908, also solving some problems of discordance between the main past checklists. Summarizing, 39 genera and 119 species are present; of these, 72 represent records accepted by the literature, while 47 are records questioned in the literature but which represent distinct taxa surely present in Argentina; 14 additional taxa, instead, are clearly dubious. The authors also report the correct genus assignment to Viridiscus rufoviridis (du Bois-Reymond Marcus, 1944), which now becomes Barbaria rufoviridis comb. nov.
Until now, the tardigrade fauna of the Maltese archipelago was unknown, since only the presence of unidentified tardigrades in Malta was reported in the literature. The present study includes the analysis of 11 moss and lichen samples collected in 2015 and 2017 from the islands of Malta and Gozo, and 10 historical microscopic preparations from past fieldwork by Pilato and Binda. Eleven species are reported for the Maltese archipelago, of which, three are new to science but still to be formally described. The taxonomic and faunistic data obtained are discussed in comparison with those of Sicily and North Africa, aiming to draft preliminary faunistic and biogeographic considerations.
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