Two New Species of Globular Springtails
Found in Taiwan
The hexapod class Collembola, also known as springtail, is
an abundant and species-rich group of microarthropods commonly found on
the surface of plants and rocks and in the leaf litter and soil, but
yet its global diversity is poorly understood. A research group from
the Department of Life Science and the Institute of Ecology and
Evolutionary at the National Taiwan University reports two new species
of this group in Taiwan. Both of these species were originally
identified as Ptenothrix denticulata
(Folsom, 1899), a species that have been widely reported from both
sides of the Pacific Ocean. However, morphological and molecular
analyses unequivocally indicate that the springtails found in Taiwan
belong to two unknown species. This revisionary study also designates a
lectotype for P. denticulata after examining its syntypes. This study removes P. denticulata from the country’s collembolan checklist and increases the species richness to 59.

Read the full article, published by Zoological
Studies, here
Follow Zoological Studies on
Twitter @ZooStudies
and Facebook