Dugesia benazzii Lepori, 1951, 2018

Stocchino, Giacinta Angela, 2018, 80 years of research on planarians (Platyhelminthes, Tricladida) from Sardinia, Italy: an annotated checklist, Zootaxa 4532 (4), pp. 539-552 : 540

publication ID

https://doi.org/ 10.11646/zootaxa.4532.4.5

publication LSID

lsid:zoobank.org:pub:807B317B-D883-439F-97B9-B0C0F09D9666

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5988948

persistent identifier

https://treatment.plazi.org/id/C45EE309-B119-FFF4-66FB-FEBC150DFC3E

treatment provided by

Plazi

scientific name

Dugesia benazzii Lepori, 1951
status

sp. nov.

Dugesia benazzii Lepori, 1951 View in CoL

The new species D. benazzii was described by Lepori (1951) as a taxon endemic to the two islands Sardinia and Corsica. However, further studies carried out in the Tuscany Archipelago enlarged the geographic range of this species to include also Capraia Island ( Benazzi & Benazzi Lentati, 1976).

Dugesia benazzii View in CoL is represented by sexual and mixed natural populations, the latter characterized by the coexistence of sexual and fissiparous individuals (see Stocchino & Manconi 2013). This species has a haploid chromosome complement of n=8, which is the most common set of chromosomes among Dugesia species, with several biotypes that can be distinguished by the ploidy level and by the type of development (amphimixis or gynogenesis): (1) diploid, amphimictic (2n = 16; n = 8); (2) triploid, amphimictic (3n = 24; n = 8); (3) triploid, gynogenetic synaptic (3n = 24; n = 8); (4) tetraploid, gynogenetic asynaptic (4n = 32; n = 8) ( Lepori, 1948a; Benazzi & Benazzi Lentati, 1976; Vacca et al., 1988, 1993; Pala et al., 1999). Moreover, a tetraploid, gynogenetic synaptic karyoptype (4n = 32; n = 8) and a hexaploid karyotype (6n = 48; n = 8) in a sexual population were also found in Sardinia (M. Pala, pers. comm.); the type of development of this last population is unknown.

Dugesia benazzii View in CoL is widely distributed in Sardinia both in small rivers and in large hydrographic basins ( Lepori, 1951; Benazzi & Deri, 1988; Vacca et al., 1988; 1993; Pala et al., 1999; M. Pala, pers. comm.). A single population has been found also in a spring (Su Cantaru Spring) ( Stocchino et al., 2013c) ( Fig. 1 View FIGURE 1 ).

Until the 1960s D. benazzii View in CoL was considered to be the only species of the genus Dugesia present in Sardinia ( Benazzi, 1969). However, researches carried out by Lepori, Pala and co-workers since the 1970s led to the discovery of four other species, while in-depth investigations on their biology were also performed (see below).

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Platyhelminthes

Class

Rhabditophora

Order

Tricladida

Family

Dugesiidae

Genus

Dugesia

Loc

Dugesia benazzii Lepori, 1951

Stocchino, Giacinta Angela 2018
2018
Loc

Dugesia benazzii

Stocchino 2018
2018
Loc

Dugesia benazzii

Stocchino 2018
2018
Loc

D. benazzii

Stocchino 2018
2018
GBIF Dataset (for parent article) Darwin Core Archive (for parent article) View in SIBiLS Plain XML RDF