Near Hari Mandir Road, Hirapur, Dhanbad 826001, Jharkhand, India. .
Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita, Universit di Modena e Reggio Emilia, via G. Campi 213/D, I-41125 Modena, Italy. .
Zootaxa. 2021 Sep 1;5027(3):332-350. doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.5027.3.2.
India has a long history of research on freshwater and marine Gastrotricha. In more than 110 years of study on Order Chaetonotida, two families consisting of 11 genera and 39 species have been described. Thirty of these species are taxa originally described from other continents, while only nine species (7 freshwater, 2 marine) are only known from India. The large percentage (77%) of so-called cosmopolitan species in India has contributed to the phenomenon known as the meiofauna paradox. However, a careful review of the pertaining literature provides a different biogeographical picture of the chaetonotidan fauna of India. Herein we show that the high incidence of European and North American species reported from India is mainly due to a mixture of misidentification and species lumping. In fact, for only 12 species there are enough data that would make the Indian specimens morphological similar to taxa previously reported from Europe and/or North America. However, without the appropriate molecular sequence data for comparison, there is no way to rule out the possibility of cryptic speciation.We conclude that further sampling throughout India and the use of more powerful microscopical techniques (e.g., DIC optics) and molecular sequencing will reveal more species and improve the quality of re-descriptions of those (9 spp.) that so far appear to be endemic to the subcontinent. Here we recommend six species to be excluded from the fauna of India while another 11 species (non endemic to India) should be considered dubitatively present in the Indian fauna.
印度在淡水和海洋 Gastrtricha 方面的研究历史悠久。在对 Chaetonotida 目进行了 110 多年的研究之后，已经描述了由 11 个属和 39 个种组成的两个科。其中 30 个种是最初从其他大陆描述的分类单元，而只有 9 个种（7 种淡水，2 种海洋）仅在印度被发现。印度所谓的世界性物种的高比例（77%）促成了中生动物悖论现象。然而，对相关文献的仔细审查提供了印度 Chaetonotida 动物群的不同生物地理图景。本文表明，从印度报道的大量欧洲和北美的物种主要是由于误识别和物种合并造成的。事实上，只有 12 个物种有足够的数据，使印度标本在形态上与以前从欧洲和/或北美报道的分类单元相似。然而，由于没有适当的分子序列数据进行比较，因此无法排除隐生种的可能性。我们得出结论，在印度进行进一步的采样，并使用更强大的显微镜技术（例如，DIC 光学）和分子测序，将揭示更多的物种，并改善对那些（9 种）迄今为止被认为是该次大陆特有种的重新描述的质量。在此，我们建议将 6 种物种从印度动物群中排除，而另外 11 种（非印度特有种）应被视为印度动物群中可疑存在的物种。
