New Species of Deep-sea Limpet Discovered in South China Sea

Chen et al. discovered a new species of limpet in a deep-sea methane seep in the South China Sea, which they have named Paralepetopsis polita. The discovery is significant because it hints at a previously unknown relationship between two different families of limpets – the new species morphologically matched the genus Paralepetopsis in the family Neolepetopsidae, but phylogenetic reconstruction found it to be nested within Lepetidae instead. Though the lack of molecular data from type species of Paralepetopsis means there remains unresolved taxonomic issues for the genus, this unexpected result challenges our understanding of the evolutionary origins of key morphological characters used to differentiate different families of limpets and opens up new avenues for research into their evolution and systematics.

Read the full article, published by Zoological Studies, here

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