Tantulocarida (Crustacea) from the Southern Ocean deep sea, and the description of three new species of Tantulacus Huys, Andersen & Kristensen, 1992

Abstract

During the expedition ANT XIX/3 meiofauna samples were collected from the German research vessel Polarstern near the Shackleton Fracture Zone. During sorting of the samples 86 tantulus larvae were found. Extensive examination of the larvae revealed a high diversity of tantulocaridans in the Southern Ocean deep sea (33 species). A remarkable proportion of these were new species of Tantulacus Huys, Andersen & Kristensen, 1992. The present paper reports the discovery of three new Antarctic tantulocarids which are referred to Tantulacus. The affiliation of T. longispinosus n. sp., T. karolae n. sp. and T. dieteri n. sp. to Tantulacus is straightforward: all representatives of the Tantulocarida are characterised by the presence of 1-2 slender setae on the endopod of the second to fifth thoracopods, but in none of the hitherto described genera, other than Tantulacus, are these elements modified. Tantulacus hoegi Huys, Andersen & Kristensen, 1992 and the three new species share the possession of a distal rigid spine on the endopod of the second to fifth thoracopods as a synapomorphy and thus can be readily distinguished from other tantulocaridans. This is the first record of free-living sediment-inhabiting tantulus larvae from this area, although this probably reflects the degree of undersampling.

Fossil Crustaceans as Parasites and Hosts

“…About 35 species of tantulocaridans are currently known, either from parasitic stages attached to marine crustaceans, or from their free-living infective larvae collected from the meiofauna in marine sediments from shallow coastal waters to the deep-sea (Mohrbeck et al, 2010). Larvae are typically about 100 mm in length.…”

First register of the Tantulocarida order Boxshall and Lincoln, 1983 (Crustacea) in deep waters of the Colombian Caribbean

“…The collected individuals are in process of being deposited within the Makuriwa collection of Invemar. The next works were used as a reference for tantulocaridans identification: Lincoln (1983 and1987), Huys et al (1993), Huys and Conroy-Dalton (1997), Ohtsuka (1997), Ohtsuka and Boxshall (1998), Kornev et al (2004), Knudsen et al (2009), Kolbasov and Petrunina (2010), Mohrbeck et al (2010), Petrunina et al (2013), Huys et al (2014), and Petrunina and Huys (2020). For the identification of host peracarid crustaceans: Petrescu (1991), Blake and Scott (1997), Larsen and Heard (2004), Roccatagliata (2004), Mühlenhardt-Siegel (2005 and2011), and Drumm and Bird (2016).…”

High-Throughput Sequencing—The Key to Rapid Biodiversity Assessment of Marine Metazoa?

“…The scarcity of professional taxonomists for some marine taxa often results in identifications to higher taxonomic units and an insufficient knowledge of biodiversity (e.g. [ 3 , 4 ]). Also, major difficulties arise in the morphological recognition of cryptic species and where individuals within a species exhibit phenotypic plasticity [ 5 – 7 ].…”