ABSTRACT
We report a histology-free description of the eumonostiliferous hoplonemertean Tetrastemma parallelos sp. nov. based on a single specimen dredged from a depth between 11 and 18 m off Kouyatsu, Tateyama, Chiba, Japan. Dorsally, T. parallelos sp. nov. is characterised by the presence of two orange-pigmented parallel lines in addition to a reddish cephalic patch. Molecular phylogenetic analyses based on partial sequences of 16S, 18S, 28S rRNA, cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI), and histone H3 gene markers along with sequences of 20 Tetrastemma species available in public databases confirmed that our species belongs to a clade recently proposed as the Asian–Australian Pacific subclade of the genus.
http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:7A50603A-9D73-449D-A2E7-343C20AF3A23
Acknowledgements
We thank Mr Mamoru Yamaguchi (MCRCOU) for the help in collecting the material; Professor Masato Kiyomoto (MCRCOU) for allowing RY to use the facility at MCRCOU; and Professor Alexei V. Chernyshev (A.V. Zhirmunsky National Scientific Centre of Marine Biology, Russia) for providing us descriptions of his undescribed Tetrastemma species.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.