Actual state of knowledge of the limno-terrestrial Tardigrade fauna of the Argentina and new genus assignment for Viridiscus rufoviridis (du Bois-Reymond Marcus, 1944).

ALEJANDRA MARIANA ROCHA; CAMARDA, DANIELE; OSTERTAG, BELÉN; DOMA, IRENE LUISA; MEIER, M. FLORENCIA; LISI, OSCAR

Diversity

MDPI

Año: 2023

Limno-terrestrial tardigrades of Argentina had been studied starting in 1908 and for along time by European researchers, most frequently in the Patagonian region (incl. the Land of Fire).Starting during the 1980s, Claps, Rossi and collaborators published many surveys, studying otherregions also, but with taxonomic criteria at that time. Since the 2000s, methodical and continuousstudies using more modern criteria, have been carried out at the National University of La Pampa,contributing to the faunistic, taxonomic and ecological knowledge (including new species descriptions). This paper provides a comprehensive list of the limno-terrestrial tardigrade fauna reported from Argentina, with pertinent evaluations, owing to a careful study of every pertinent piece of literature since 1908, also solving some problems of discordance between the main past checklists.Summarizing, 39 genera and 119 species are present; of these, 72 represent records accepted bythe literature, while 47 are records questioned in the literature but which represent distinct taxasurely present in Argentina; 14 additional taxa, instead, are clearly dubious. The authors also reportthe correct genus assignment to Viridiscus rufoviridis (du Bois-Reymond Marcus, 1944), which now becomes Barbaria rufoviridis comb. nov.