A new species of head-shield sea slug, Melanochlamys droupadi (Heterobranchia: Aglajidae) from the north-western Bay of Bengal, India

ABSTRACT

A new species of the head-shield sea slug is described herein from an examination of the morphological and anatomical characters. A molecular analysis supported the novel status of the species. This species is named Melanochlamys droupadi n. sp. in the honour of the Hon'ble president of India, Shrimati (Mrs) Droupadi Murmu. It is the second species from the Indian region and the third true tropical species. All the specimens were collected from the Digha coast of West Bengal and the Udaipur coast of Odisha state, along the north-western Bay of Bengal.

ZooBank registration number with the article number as: http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:CB84F7F1-5EA7-4631-AFA0-0E057D8380FE

KEYWORDS:

• Cephalaspidea
• Digha coast
• Indo-Pacific
• intertidal
• morphology
• molecular systematics

Acknowledgements

Our sincere thanks to Dr Dhriti Banerjee, Director, Zoological Survey of India, for constant support and encouragement. PCT thanks Dr S. Balakrishnan, Scientist-E & Officer-in-Charge of MARC, ZSI Digha for constant inspiration. SS was supported by a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship and SA was supported by a Senior Research Fellowship of ZSI. We thank Dr Matt John Nimbs, Fisheries Scientist, Department of Primary Industries and Environment, New South Wales, Australia, and two anonymous referees for their constructive comments that improved this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).