A New Species of Tiny Ostracod (Crustacea) from Western Japan

The present study describes Pontopolycope orientalis sp. nov. (Polycopidae), and this is the first report of living Pontopolycope from the Indo-Pacific region. Pontopolycope is defined by the morphological characteristics of the carapace, the following five fossil and subfossil (empty valve) species of Polycope (Polycopidae) are moved to Pontopolycope: Pontopolycope luxuriosa (Herrig, 1964) comb. nov., P. sanctacatherinae (Whatley and Downing, 1983) comb. nov., P. krauseae (Herrig, 1994) comb. nov., P. proboscidea (Herrig, 1994) comb. nov., and P. isolata (Whatley, Jones and Wouters, 2000) comb. nov. Finally, the nucleotide sequence data of three genes (18S rRNA, 28S rRNA, and mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1) of the new species are provided for future systematic and phylogenetic studies.
Pontopolycope_orientalis_male_left_valve
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