Molecular taxonomy of endemic coastal Ligia isopods from the Hawaiian Islands: re-description of L. hawaiensis and description of seven novel cryptic species.

ABSTRACT: Past phylogeographic work has shown Ligia hawaiensis, a coastal isopod species endemic to the Hawaiian Islands, to be a paraphyletic complex of several highly genetically divergent yet morphologically cryptic lineages. Despite the need for a taxonomic revision of this species, the lack of morphological differentiation has proven an impediment to formally describe new Ligia species in the region. Molecular characters and species delimitation approaches have been successfully used to formally describe cryptic species in other crustacean taxa, suggesting they may aid taxonomic revisions of L. hawaiensis. Herein, various distance- and tree-based molecular species delimitation approaches are applied on a concatenated dataset comprised of both mitochondrial and nuclear gene

SUBMITTER: Santamaria CA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6698373 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature