Two new species of the genus Cephalothrix revealed through DNA barcoding and multiloci analyses.

FERNANDEZ ALVAREZ, FERNANADO ANGEL; JOSE E. F. ALFAYA; MACHORDOM ANNIE

Quingdao

Congreso; 8th International Conference on Nemertean Biology; 2014

Ocean University of China

The use of the DNA barcoding has been shown as a useful tool in order to estimate their actual biodiversity and to solve several taxonomical problems, but its potential is hindered by the fact that only 6% of the known nemertean biodiversity has been molecularly examined. Furthermore, many of the COI sequences available are not identified at species level, which highlight the need of taxonomic studies to appropriately identified and described unknown species. Here, new COI sequences were analyzed together with all the available COI haplotypes of the genus Cephalothrix, the best represented nemertean genus on GenBank. Furthermore, a multiloci analysis was carried out in order to better estimate phylogenetic relationships using additional molecular markers (18S and 28S rRNA). As a result, two new species of the genus Cephalothrix were identified. The external and internal morphology was studied in order to formally describe these two new species. Cephalothrix sp. A was a species previously sequenced but not described, and the previous Iberian records of C. rufifrons (Johnston, 1837) should be addressed to this new species. Cephalothrix sp. B is the first species recorded in both sides of the Atlantic Ocean (Iberian Peninsula and Argentina) for this genus. Moreover, fragments of 28S and 18S were sequenced for the first time for the species C. simula (Iwata, 1952).