First records of water bears (Phylum Tardigrada) from Swaziland

Abstract

There are no published records of water bears (Phylum Tardigrada) from Swaziland. Two samples of foliose lichen collected in 2010 contained nine tardigrade specimens and one egg belonging to five genera and seven species: Echiniscus cf. quadrispinosus, Milnesium sp., Milnesium cf. bohleberi, Hypsibius cf. convergens, Ramazzottius sp., Macrobiotus cf. pallarii and Minibiotus harrylewisi. Milnesium sp. resembles Milnesium lagniappe, a species from southeastern USA, in its cuticle, and possibly in the number of peribuccal lamellae. Specimens from Lesotho and South Africa previously identified as Milnesium tardigradum are in fact Milnesium cf. bohleberi. The habitus of Ramazzottius sp. is consistent with R. theroni, a southern African species, but due to the condition of the specimen the presence of cuticular sculpture cannot be definitively ruled out. Macrobiotus cf. pallarii differs from M. pallarii sensu stricto in some structural details of the egg processes. This is the first record of Minibiotus harrylewisi outside of its type location in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Integrative taxonomy resolves species identities within the Macrobiotus pallarii complex (Eutardigrada: Macrobiotidae)

“…Macrobiotus ragonesei was collected only once in the type locality in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Central Africa); however, it is possible that the population collected and identified as Macrobiotus cf. pallarii by [ 92 ] from Swaziland (South Africa) represents M. ragonesei or a related species because eggs from the Congolese population resembled those of M. ragonesei (“processes are rounded rather than tapering, and the number of areolae surrounding them is ten to twelve rather than eight or nine” [ 92 ]). Another species, Macrobiotus insularis Pilato, 2006 [ 93 ], known only from the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, is currently assigned to the Macrobiotus polyopus group [ 93 ].…”

“…Species of the Macrobiotus pallarii complex are not commonly found, but the complex has a wide, possibly global distribution. Although the majority of records are concentrated in Europe (Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Republic of Bulgaria, Russian Federation, Turkey, Yugoslavia [ 25 , 82 , 96 – 98 ]), there are also reports from Asia (North Korea, Russian Federation [ 25 ]), North America (United States, Cayman Islands [ 28 , 86 – 88 ]), and Africa (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Swaziland [ 27 , 92 ]). In light of our findings, all these records except the type localities should be considered dubious and be designated as species of the Macrobiotus pallarii complex, i.e., as Macrobiotus aff.…”

Echiniscidae (Heterotardigrada) of South Africa

“…Spatial geographic distributions of species were presented in simplified maps. All available and trustworthy records extracted from the literature (after McInnes et al 2017;Meyer et al 2018) and those obtained in this survey were utilised. Records referring to large geographic entities (e.g.…”

“…Substantial contributions were made also by Dastych (1980Dastych ( , 1992Dastych ( , 1993Dastych ( , 2009, who erected two new genera (Calcarobiotus and Paradiphascon), and described Ramazzottius szeptycki, the first ramazzottiid species known to exhibit dorsolateral gibbosities. Other studies dealt with single species found in Tsitsikamma Mountains (Binda 1984;Pilato et al 1991Pilato et al ), drakensberg (kaczmarek et al 2006), the table Mountain (tumanov 2020a), or kwazulu-Natal and Swaziland regions (Meyer & Hinton 2009;Meyer et al 2018). Most recently, a preliminary analysis of apochelan tardigrades extracted from the same South African samples as analysed in the present study indicated the presence of at least ca.…”

“…nov. mounted in Hoyer's medium. N-number of specimens/structures measured, RANGE refers to the smallest and the largest structure among all measured specimens; SD-standard deviation; sp-the proportion between the length of a given structure and the length of the scapular plate Meyer et al (2018). recorded a representative of the E. quadrispinosus complex from Swaziland, but this had much more slender claws and long cirri E that distinguish it from E. imitans sp.…”