Fridericia aurita Issel, 1905

Chen, Juanjuan, Zhang, Junqian & Xie, Zhicai, 2025, List of species records of enchytraeids (Enchytraeidae, Clitellata, Annelida) in China, Zootaxa 5566 (1), pp. 61-96 : 67-68

? Fridericia aurita Issel, 1905 (T) (new record in China)

Fridericia aurita Issel, 1905 ; Nielsen & Christensen 1961; Rota 1995; Bauer 1996; Rota 1995; Dózsa-Farkas 2002a; Schmelz 2003; Dózsa-Farkas 2019.

Distribution and habitat. Italy ( Issel 1905), England ( Friend 1912), The Netherlands ( de Gunst 1965), Belgium ( Černosvitov 1935), Germany ( Bell 1962; Möller 1971) Poland ( Moszyński & Moszyńska, 1957; Kasprzak 1982), France ( Healy 1980), Czech Republic ( Černosvitov 1930), Austria ( Nurminen 1977), Bosnia ( Černosvitov 1930), Romania ( Radu & Stefan 1967) and Algeria ( Černosvitov 1933; Rota & Healy 1994); Hungary (Dózsa-Farkas 2019). New record in China. Terrestrial.

New records. Hubei Province, Mount Shizi , litter layer of hardwood forest (30°28’42.57”N, 114°21’10.48”E; 44 m asl), leg. Y. Ge, 06. 2019; Mount Luojia , under a pine tree (30°32’05.39”N, 114°22’10.95”E; 31 m asl), 04. 2019, leg. X. Jiang & J. Chen.

Remarks. This species is a new record in China. This species was identified as F. aurita according to the key provided by Schmelz (2003), the most prominent character are the extremely long spermatozoa (over 1000 μm) and ear-shaped diverticula. Our specimens also correspond well in body size, oesophageal appendages, pharyngeal glands and the origination dorsal blood vessel. Our specimens differ from the original description in (1) smaller body size (segments: 42 vs. 45–62), (2) longer ectal ducts (2–3 times long as ampulla vs. not longer than ampulla) and (3) smaller sperm funnels (ca. 200 μm long vs. 400 μm long).

F. auritoides Schmelz, 2003 closely resembles F. aurita , but F. auritoides is characterized, apart from shorter spermatozoa, by three characters not dealt with in the description of F. aurita : an additional pair of ventral pharyngeal gland lobes in VII, bursal slit Y-shaped, and a small subneural gland in XIII. Our specimens are not F. auritoides , because the additional ventral pharyngeal gland and subneural gland absent.

All those differences mentioned above show that our species maybe a new species, our identification is tentative due to the limitation of the number of specimens as well as the unavailability of molecular sequences.