New earthworm records from Turkey, with description of three new species (Oligochaeta: Lumbricidae)

Multigene phylogeny reveals a new Iranian earthworm genus (Lumbricidae: Philomontanus) with three new species

Lumbricidae taxonomy is vastly restricted by the morphological simplicity of earthworms and their lack of complex appendices. This has led to confusing results in the Lumbricidae classifications, which in turn, has hindered our ability to identify and assign new and cryptic species to the family. Here we propose the addition of a new Lumbricidae genus from the Zagros and Elburz Mountains of Iran, i.e. Philomontanus gen. nov, including three new species. Our taxonomic inferences were based on the phylogenetic analysis of two nuclear gene regions (28S rDNA and 18S rDNA) and 11 mitochondrial gene regions (16S rDNA, 12S rDNA, NADH dehydrogenase I, cytochrome oxidase subunits I and II and tRNAs Asn, Asp, Val, Leu, Ala and Ser). Philomontanus gen. nov comprises the earthworm species Philomontanus sarii sp. nov., Philomontanus mahmoudi sp. nov. and Philomontanus baloutchi sp. nov. These three species are morphologically similar to each other with only a few characters separating them (e.g. size, pigmentation and position of clitellum). Our findings support the adoption of an integrative approach including molecular information (e.g., DNA sequences) to aid earthworm classification and develop a robust taxonomy.

Integrated taxonomy reveals multiple species in the Dendrobaena byblica (Rosa, 1893) complex (Oligochaeta: Lumbricidae)

Dendrobaena byblica (Rosa, 1893) is a Circum-Mediterranean species complex composed of at least 17 nominal taxa. Regarding the most important species characters (clitellum and tubercles) the worms belonging to the genus Fitzingeria Zicsi, 1978 seem to be very close to the D. byblica species group. Here we provide the first molecular phylogenetic analysis of the byblica species group and the Fitzingeria species, and show that the genus Fitzingeria is polyphyletic and groups together with the Carpathian and Balkanic deeply pigmented byblica forms. The other main clade consists of the ‘classical’ byblica species. The morphological characteristics also support these results. On the basis of the molecular and morphological characters the species of the former Fitzingeria were relegated to Dendrobaena and four new species were described together with a new replacement name Dendrobaena carpathomontana nom. nov. for F. platyura montana (Černosvitov, 1932).