Description of a New Scaled Species of <i>Ptychostomella</i> (Gastrotricha: Macrodasyida) from the Brazilian Coast and a Cladistics Analysis of the Genus

Abstract

A new species of marine Gastrotricha from the north coast of São Paulo state, Brazil, is described. Adults of Ptychostomella sebastiana sp. nov. are unique in that they possess a pair of dorsolateral “rod-like” cephalic sensory organs and subrectangular scales covering the lateral body surfaces. A cladistic analysis was performed to investigate the internal relationship of the representatives of the taxa based on morphological data. Our analysis supported the monophyly of the taxon Ptychostomella, but its internal phylogenetic relationships are not well established due to the low phylogenetic signal of morphological characters used in the present study.

Keywords

• Gastrotricha
• morphology
• phylogeny
• macrodasyida