Three new Brazilian species of the land planarian Choeradoplana (Platyhelminthes: Tricladida: Geoplaninae), and an emendation of the genus

Abstract

Three new Brazilian species of the neotropical land planarian genus Choeradoplana (Platyhelminthes: Tricladida: Continenticola: Geoplaninae) are described, making a total of nine species within the genus. All the new species share unique derived characters typical of the genus. Two of the new species exhibit important features representing morphological variations that were previously unknown for the genus: the dorsal cutaneous longitudinal muscle layer, as well as the ventral one, partially sunken into the parenchyma in one species, and the common ovovitelline duct approaching the copulatory apparatus ventrally in the other. As a consequence of these morphological variations, an emendation of the genus is proposed.

Keywords:

• Flatworms
• Turbellaria
• Continenticola
• neotropical
• taxonomy
• Brazil

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Gladis Maria Schmidt for helping with diurnal and nocturnal samplings throughout the years; to Júlio Pedroni for the pictures of the living specimens of C. bocaina and C. banga; to the Instituto Florestal (Secretaria do Meio Ambiente do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil) and Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade (Brazil) for licensing the fieldwork; to two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. AcademicEnglishSolutions.com revised the English. F.C. has financial support from FAPESP (Brazil) and Fundación BBVA (Spain).