ABSTRACT
Small (c. 1 cm long) terrestrial planarians found in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France are described as a new species, Marionfyfea adventor sp. nov. Individuals of the new species have a patchy brown external appearance with small, seemingly random pale blue-ish patches. They have multiple eyes, uniserial around the anterior end, biserial or triserial laterally for a short distance then sparsely uniserial and lateral to the posterior end. The anatomy is characterized by five or six pairs of ventral testes and a single pair of ovaries adjacent to the pharyngeal pouch. The base of each ovary is surrounded by parovarian cells. The penis is of the inverted type with a basal hemispherical seminal vesicle. Two adenodactyls, one ventral, one dorsal, are present in the common antrum. The only other known species of Marionfyfea is recorded only from the Auckland Islands, New Zealand and we assume that the new species has been introduced to Europe.
http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:7AC3D565-0BEB-4B67-8BEC-11A13A70D663
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following people who were vigilant enough to find specimens: Brian Boag, Marco Faasse, Andrew Fox, Heike Kappes, Nikita van Zeijl, Brian Eversham, David Fenwick, Elaine Roll and Tim Sexton. Simon Barbier and Jean-Lou Justine brought the French specimen to our attention. Peter Walker and the School of Life Sciences, University of Manchester are thanked for providing HJ access to the histology facility. Leigh Winsor and two other referees are thanked for their constructive suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.