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Abstract
During a survey of the infauna of seagrass meadows in Venezuela, several specimens of an unknown species of Fabriciinae were collected. The species could not be assigned to any genus of the subfamily, although it was most closely allied to Fabricinuda Fitzhugh, 1990. However, the absence of pseudospatulate inferior notochaetae on chaetiger 8 prevented assignment of the specimens to this genus since their presence on chaetigers 3 to 8 is one of its diagnostic apomorphies. In order to decide whether to establish a new genus for the species or to redefine Fabricinuda, a phylogenetic analysis of the subfamily was made on the basis of a pre‐existing character matrix. Twenty‐two anatomical characters were analysed for 59 species including the new one, and from the resulting consensus tree it was clear that the new species must be included within Fabricinuda and consequently an emendation of the genus is provided herein.
Acknowledgements
The present paper is a part of the results of the research project “Estudio integral del sistema del Parque Nacional Morrocoy con miras al desarrollo de planes de uso y gestión para su conservación”, financially supported by the Fondo Nacional para la Ciencia y Tecnología (FONACIT) of the Venezuelan government. The authors would like to express their gratitude to Dr Guillermo San Martin, from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and David Bone from Universidad Simón Bolivar of Caracas, for their help in this work. Our colleague Maite Aguado, also from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, deserves special acknowledgement for her advice and support in the implementation of cladistic analysis; without her expertise in phylogenetic inference and in the use of the current software applied to this kind of research this study would have been impossible. The very valuable comments of two anonymous referees, which greatly improved the quality of this work, are sincerely acknowledged.