ABSTRACT
In this paper, Megastygarctides sezginii sp. nov., a new marine species from the Black Sea (Turkey), is described. Morphological and morphometric studies have revealed that M. sezginii sp. nov. is most similar to M. setoloso Morgan & O’Reilly, 1988, but differs from it through the presence of two types of fibrils, a lack of cuticle granulation, the presence of three lateral projections with fibrils, leg fibrils arranged in transverse stripes and the presence of clumps of fibrils near the clavae. In the studied environment, the new species is frequently found in summer and almost absent in winter. Additionally, a taxonomic key for all Megastygarctides species is presented.
http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:53AA1D57-8700-4A18-9099-1CDDBAEB4D3A
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Acknowledgements
The project team of Sinop University (Turkey) is acknowledged for their efforts in collecting and sorting the material and performing water and sediment analyses. We also want to thank Fiona Ware from National Museums of Scotland who lent us the holotype of M. setoloso. Studies have been conducted in the framework of the activities of BARg (Biodiversity and Astrobiology Research group). Special thanks go to Daniel Stec (Jagiellonian University), who tried to isolate DNA from analysed individuals, unfortunately without success.
This paper is dedicated to the memory of a brilliant Turkish scientist, Professor Dr Murat Sezgin, who suddenly passed away at age 43 on 28 July 2017, in a traffic accident. He was the dean of the Fisheries Faculty (Sinop University, Turkey), an active team leader of the benthos ecology group who made significant contributions to the study of meiobenthos ecology in Turkey, and the coordinator of this meiobenthos project; he was also the PhD supervisor and a great friend to the first author.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Derya Ürkmez http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9572-9886
Milena Roszkowska http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1640-8142
Krzysztof Zawierucha http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0754-1411
Reinhardt Møbjerg Kristensen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9549-1188
Łukasz Kaczmarek http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5260-6253