Review of Chinese littoral Thalassaphorura (Collembola: Onychiuridae), with the description of two new species

Abstract

The present paper is the third contribution to the knowledge of littoral Collembola of China. Species of the genus Thalassaphorura occurring in sandy and shingly beaches in China are reviewed. Descriptions of two new species, Thalassaphorura brevisetosa sp. nov. and Thalassaphorura hainanica sp. nov. are provided. Thalassaphorura duplopunctata and Thalassaphorura lifouensis are recorded for the first time from China, and T. duplopunctata is re-described mainly based on Chinese specimens. Thalassaphorura brevisetosa sp. nov. is characterized by having strongly reduced unguiculus and very short body chaetae. Thalassaphorura hainanica sp. nov. resembles Thalassaphorura pomorskii from which it differs by 2 + 2 pso on Abd. IV, absence of chaetae on Th. I sternum and four chaetae on subcoxa 1 of leg I, among other characters.

http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:B8AC3DB3-DF12-47E2-ACEE-969D72C594C8

Keywords:

• taxonomy
• chaetotaxy
• Pacific coast
• Sensilla
• springtail

Acknowledgements

The present study was supported by the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (31301873) and NSFC-RFBR Cooperative Research Project (31111120077/11-04-91179-GFENa). We sincerely thank Y.X. Luan, Y. Bu, C.W. Huang (Shanghai) and N.A. Kuznetsova (Moscow) for their warm assistance during the collection. The work was also supported by the National Museum of Natural History (Paris). We also give our cordial thanks to Louis Deharveng and Anne Bedos (Paris) for providing favourable working conditions and Bettine van Vuuren (South Africa) for linguistic corrections. We are much indebted to Anatoly Babenko (Moscow) for the loan of valuable material for T. duplopunctata.