Chaetonotus monobarbatus Visvesvara, 1964

Chatterjee, Tapas & Todaro, M. Antonio, 2021, An annotated checklist of the chaetonotidan Gastrotricha from India, Zootaxa 5027 (3), pp. 332-350 : 340

Chaetonotus monobarbatus Visvesvara, 1964

Records from India. MAHARASTRA: Nagpur— Visvesvara (1964); GENERAL RECORD: Naidu & Rao (2004), Purushothaman (2017).

Habitat (as in Indian records). Fresh water; among aquatic vegetation.

Distribution. Known only from India.

Remarks. This species has been found only once. According to the author Visvesvara (1964), its putative uniqueness mainly consists in the presence on the dorsal side of nine columns of barbed spines, each spine originating from a triangular elevation and not from a scale. This last information should be confirmed on new samples. Naidu & Rao (2004) considered the species within the subgenus Euchaetontous Schwank, 1990. In his revision, Kisielewski (1997) included this species among the Chaetonotus taxa of unclear subgeneric position. We support Kisielewski’s view.