A new species of Echinolaophonte and record of E. armiger (Gurney, 1927) (Crustacea, Copepoda, Harpacticoida, Laophontidae) from the Caribbean with a key to species

Abstract

A new species of the harpacticoid copepod genus Echinolaophonte is described here from specimens obtained during a biological survey of Rodadero Bay, a coastal system in the Colombian Caribbean. This species has been previously recorded as E. armiger Gurney, 1927 in different geographic areas (Indian and Pacific Oceans). The Colombian specimens recognized as E. villabonae sp. n. and true E. armiger are deemed as distinct species based on differences in several features of which the shape of the rostrum and the dorsal spinous process on the prosome are among the most distinctive. These and other characters are shared by specimens recorded as E. armiger from Caroline Islands and Australia that are now incorporated to the new species. The finding of the true E. armiger, previously known only from Egypt, the Texan coast, Brazil, and possibly Bermuda, constitutes the first record of this species in the western Caribbean and a regional range extension. A key to the identification of the 13 known species of the genus is also provided.

Revision and update of the checklist of copepods (Crustacea: Hexanauplia) of the Colombian Caribbean

“…Además de los 10 nuevos registros obtenidos en Of the 214 species listed in Tables 2 and 3, twentyfour species (3 calanoids, 11 cyclopoids, 9 harpacticoids and 1 monstrilloid) correspond to records obtained after the last inventory of marine copepods from the Colombian Caribbean (Medellín-Mora and Navas, 2010). Besides the 10 new records of the mentioned project, el proyecto mencionado, 11 nuevas especies o nuevos registros fueron obtenidos en la bahía de Gaira (Fuentes-Reinés y Suárez-Morales, 2017a, 2017cGómez y Fuentes-Reinés, 2017a, Suárez-Morales y Fuentes-Reinés, 2018. El ciclopoideo Oncaea scottodicarloi se registró en ambos estudios, cerca a Coveñas (ecorregion Morrosquillo, Ahrens et al, 2012) y Gaira (ecorregion Tayrona, Fuentes-Reinés y Suárez-Morales, 2017b).…”

“…La lista incluye el registro del primer copépodo del orden Mostrilloida encontrado en Colombia (Dorado-Roncancio y Dorado-Roncancio, 2018), el cual fué Taking into account that over the last decade the copepod fauna of benthic environments has started to be surveyed, we also include in the updated checklist benthic copepods (Fuentes-Reinés and Suárez- Morales, 2017cMorales, , 2018Fuentes-Reinés et al, 2017;Gómez andFuentes-Reinés, 2017a, 2017b), collected in phytal habitats of coastal waters of Gaira Bay. Two of those publications also reported planktonic cyclopoids (Fuentes-Reinés and Suárez-Morales, 2017a, 2017b) for the same study area.…”

“…Over the last decade, copepods inhabiting phytal habitats of Gaira Bay have been intensively studied (Fuentes-Reinés and Suárez-Morales, 2017c;Fuentes-Reinés et al, 2017;Gómez andFuentes-Reinés, 2017a, 2017b;Suárez-Morales and Fuentes-Reinés, 2018), culminating in the description of seven new species and the addition of two species to the Caribbean species inventory. Moreover, planktonic species of Kelleria, Lubbockia, Farranula, and Oncaea (Fuentes-Reinés and Suárez-Morales, 2017b) and one species of Neocyclops (Fuentes-Reines and Suárez-Morales, 2017a) have been recorded.…”

A new species of the genus <i>Echinolaophonte</i> Nicholls, 1941 (Copepoda, Harpacticoida, Laophontidae) from the Aegean Sea coast of Turkey

“…veniliae Cottarelli et al, 1992) which share characters of the 2 evolutionary lineages of Lang (1965), but they rejected Lang's (1965) approach of using the number of spines as an evolutionary trend within the genus Echinolaophonte and created 2 provisional groups: i) the horrida-group, which accommodates the Echinolaophonte species with a sexually dimorphic P3 endopod in the male, including the species E. horrida, E. brevispinosa (Sars, 1908), E. oshoroensis Itô, 1969, E. veniliae, and E. minuta; ii) the armiger-group, which accommodates the Echinolaophonte species with a male P3 endopod as in the female, including the species E. tetracheir, E. hystrix (Brian, 1928), E. armiger (Gurney, 1927), E. armiger f. briani Lang, 1965, andE. villabonae Fuentes-Reinés &Suárez-Morales, 2017. However, the statuses of E. mirabilis Gurney (1927), E. longantennata Apostolov, 1990, and E. gladiator (Vervoort, 1964) are still unclear due to absence of male specimens.…”

“…minuta;ii) the armiger-group, which accommodates the Echinolaophonte species with a male P3 endopod as in the female, including the species E. tetracheir, E. hystrix (Brian, 1928), E. armiger (Gurney, 1927), E. armiger f. briani Lang, 1965, andE. villabonae Fuentes-Reinés &Suárez-Morales, 2017. However, the statuses of E. mirabilis Gurney (1927), E. longantennata Apostolov, 1990, andE.…”