Too familiar to be questioned? Revisiting theCrassispira cerithinaspecies complex (Gastropoda: Conoidea: Pseudomelatomidae)

Abstract

Crassispira cerithina (Anton, 1838) is a common shallow water conoidean gastropod species, broadly distributed throughout the Indo-West Pacific. It has a distinctive shell morphology and has been referred to in many publications. It is also the first species of its family to have been studied from the viewpoint of toxinology. However, our molecular phylogenetic analysis based on fragments of the COI and 28 S rRNA genes reveals the existence of two closely related distinct species, one of which is described as new (C. scala n. sp.). These two species are sympatric in several regions of the Indo-Pacific-in the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. They can be reliably distinguished by shell morphology and thus cannot be considered truly cryptic species. The radula is very similar in both species and does not permit species delimitation. A conchological reappraisal of further material similar to C. cerithina allows us to recognize two additional species, which are described as new (C. procera n. sp. from the Coral Sea and Philippines, and C. aurea n. sp. from Tahiti). These results demonstrate that even 'well-known' and seemingly well defined species may be species complexes and that molecular techniques should be routinely applied to confirm specimen identification, especially as part of resource-consuming studies, such as toxinology.

Bouchetispira ponderi n. sp. (Conoidea: Bouchetispiridae), a new deep-sea gastropod from temperate Australia

“…However, B. ponderi and B. vitrea are well-differentiated from each other by substantial genetic distance in COI, which is of similar magnitude to that measured for other conoidean species (Puillandre et al 2009;Nicolas Puillandre et al 2010;Fedosov and Puillandre 2012;Kantor et al 2017). Combined with the morphological and anatomical evidence, we consider these results sufficient for the recognition of B. ponderi as a distinct species.…”

The challenge of integrative taxonomy of rare, deep-water gastropods: the genus Exilia (Neogastropoda: Turbinelloidea: Ptychatractidae)

“…Thus, for the genus as a whole, shell-based species limits appear to be unreliable in many cases. Our work on other neogastropod taxa shows that species initially identified by by molecular characters are often characterized by distinctive and recognizable shell characters; examples in this respect include species in the genera Bathytoma (Puillandre et al, 2010a), Crassispira (Kantor et al, 2017), Lophiotoma (Puillandre et al, 2017) and Hemilienardia (Fedosov et al, 2016). Another example is the tonnoidean Bursa granularis, which was previously treated as a single, broadly distributed species, but is now considered to consist of four separate species (Sanders et al, 2017).…”

New and unusual deep-water Conoidea revised with shell, radula and DNA characters

“…Our decade-long experience of combining molecular and morphological data in Conoidea demonstrated numerous examples of existence of cryptic and pseudocryptic species, as well as wrong generic and familial attributions based on conchological characters alone [e.g. Kantor et al, 2008;Puillandre et al, 2010;Fedosov, Puillandre, 2012;Kantor et al, , 2017Puillandre et al, 2017].…”