New records of free-living microturbellarians from the Chillón River, Peru

Abstract

Microturbellarians are all mostly small free-living Platyhelminthes that do not belong to either the Polycladida or Tricladida order. This group includes species of the clades Catenulida and Rhabditophora. Species of microturbellarians are known to live in marine and continental waters such as rivers, where they are diverse and abundant. However, there are few records of microturbellarians in most of the rivers of the Pacific slope of Peru. Here, we report eight species of microturbellarians from the Chillón River, in the central region of Peru. Of the total species recorded, five (Gieysztoria cuspidata, G. bellis, Myostenostomum vanderlandi, Stenostomum tuberculosum and S. saliens) represent the first reports on the Pacific slope of the Neotropical region in Peru, thereby increasing the diversity of microturbellarians in this country.

KEYWORDS:

• Platyhelminthes
• turbellaria
• neotropics
• biodiversity
• taxonomy

Acknowledgments

We kindly thank Roberto Huanaco and Isabel Centeno for their help in field work, and Karen Velasquez for the map design. We thank the reviewers for their valuable comments and observations. The authors are grateful to Donna Pringle for reviewing the language and style of the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

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