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How to achieve internal fertilization without a vagina: the study case of the genus Archilina Ax, 1959 (Platyhelminthes, Proseriata) from Canary Islands

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Abstract

Five new species of Monocelididae (Platyhelminthes, Proseriata) are described from Eastern Atlantic. Three new Archilina species came from the Canary Islands. Two of them have the cirrus provided with a stylet, cylindrical in Archilina regina sp. nov. and spike-like in Archilina imperatrix sp. nov. Both species lack a vaginal pore: ventrally to the bursa, an area of vacuolar parenchyma is present. Archilina coronata sp. nov. lacks a stylet and has a vaginal pore. The three species are sister taxa to Duploperaclistus circocirrus and Duplominona miranda sp. nov., from Brittany (France), characterized by an extremely long, tubular stylet, about 150 μm in length. A further Archilina is described from Cabo Verde Islands, Archilina regisfilia sp. nov., with a funnel-shaped cirrus and without a vaginal pore. The finding in the Canary Islands of closely related species, occurring abundantly in the same habitats and differing for presence/absence of stylet and vaginal pore, suggests a role of the stylet in allowing internal fertilization in species without external vagina. The phylogeny presented, based on rDNA 18S and 28S genes, does not reflect present systematics of the Monocelididae, and the monophyly of most genera is not supported.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. Dr. Katrine Worsaae and Dr. Alejandro Martinez for organizing the workshop in Lanzarote in autumn 2011. We acknowledge for partial funding support ASSEMBLE grant agreement no. 227799 given to FS, VD for sampling in Roscoff, and to MCG for sampling in Faro. We thank the Director of the “Parco Nazionale dell’Isola di Asinara” for sampling permission. Dr. Valentina Delogu is thanked for her skillful assistance in preparing the histological sections. The title of the section “How the worm got its stylet” is coined after the seminal paper by Jondelius et al. 2011: “How the worm got its pharynx: phylogeny, classification and Bayesian assessment of character evolution in Acoela.”

Funding

This study was funded by X (grant number X).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Medicina Veterinaria, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Via F. Muroni 25, 07100, Sassari, Italy

    Fabio Scarpa, Piero Cossu, Tiziana Lai, Marco Casu & Marco Curini-Galletti

  2. Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche, , Università degli Studi di Sassari, Via F. Muroni 25, 07100, Sassari, Italy

    Daria Sanna

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  1. Fabio Scarpa
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  2. Daria Sanna
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Correspondence to Fabio Scarpa.

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All applicable international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed by the authors.

Sampling and field studies

All necessary permits for sampling and observational field studies have been obtained by the authors from the competent authorities and are mentioned in the acknowledgements, if applicable.

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Communicated by A. Martínez García

This article is a contribution to the Topical Collection Interstitial and Cave Diversity in Atlantic Oceanic Islands

This article is registered in ZooBank under urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:13BC28C2-1422-4BØ3-84B3-F344FC1BØBØB

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Scarpa, F., Sanna, D., Cossu, P. et al. How to achieve internal fertilization without a vagina: the study case of the genus Archilina Ax, 1959 (Platyhelminthes, Proseriata) from Canary Islands. Mar Biodiv 49, 2057–2073 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12526-018-0890-9

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