A new species of Pompholyx (Rotifera: Monogononta: Testudinellidae) from the United States

ABSTRACT

Genus Pompholyx Gosse, 1851 (Rotifera; Monogononta; Testudinellidae) comprises three species described from freshwater plankton around the globe. Here we describe a new species of Pompholyx collected from a freshwater pond in Massachusetts, USA. The new species resembles its congeners with respect to the following characters: paired eyespots; a dorsally arched lorica with a dorsal occipital convexity behind the corona; lateral flared and rounded lorica surfaces; a ventral surface bearing an occipital concavity posterior of the mouth; a unique egg-gland system; and the absence of a foot. However, P. faciemlarva sp. n. differs from its congeners in possessing a transverse furrow on both the dorsal and ventral surfaces of the lorica. While the trophi of P. faciemlarva sp. n. generally resemble those of other species of Testudinellidae, they do have a symmetrical pattern of unci teeth (17/17) that differs from Pompholyx sulcata (17–20/18–21, right/left), the only other species in the genus with well-described trophi. The description of this new species enhances the floristic richness of freshwater in North America.

http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:C3C18F25-673E-45E4-BFD6-0D17B694E02B

KEYWORDS:

• Freshwater
• SEM
• zooplankton
• new record

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewer for their extremely helpful reviews of this manuscript. We thank the Ripon College professional librarians for their help in securing some of the works cited in this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data in the form of videos are available from the authors upon request.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by the National Science Foundation: DEB 2051684 (R. Hochberg), DEB 2051704 (E. J. Walsh) and DEB 1257116 and DEB 2051710 (R. L. Wallace).