Micropacteridae, a new family of Remipedia (Crustacea) from the Turks and Caicos Islands Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Recent diving explorations of anchialine caves on the Turks and Caicos Islands yielded a rather small and slender new species of Remipedia. Micropacter yagerae n. gen., n. sp. is distinguished from all other species of nectiopod remipedes by a number of autapomorphic characters, including an oval body terminus with fused segments, unequal pairs of terminal claws on maxilla and maxilliped, an almost complete reduction of sternal bars and pleurotergites, molar processes with relatively few, but strong spines, and frontal filaments with bifurcate processes. Based on the unique combination of derived and primitive characters, we propose to erect a new family, Micropacteridae, for this new species and genus of Remipedia. Taxonomic diagnoses for the class Remipedia, order Nectiopoda (emended due to discovery that the maxilliped is 9-segmented), and for the families Speleonectidae and Godzilliidae are presented and discussed. 2007 Gesellschaft fr Biologische Systematik.

published proceedings

  • ORGANISMS DIVERSITY & EVOLUTION

altmetric score

  • 85.83

author list (cited authors)

  • Koenemann, S., Iliffe, T. M., & van der Ham, J. L.

citation count

  • 9

complete list of authors

  • Koenemann, Stefan||Iliffe, Thomas M||van der Ham, Joris L

publication date

  • January 2007