Scyllarus arctus (Crustacea: Decapoda: Scyllaridae) final stage phyllosoma identified by DNA analysis, with morphological description

8 pages, 4 figures

Advanced stages of Scyllarus phyllosoma larvae were collected by demersal trawling during fishery research surveys in the western Mediterranean Sea in 2003–2005. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the mitochondrial 16S rDNA gene allowed the final-stage phyllosoma of Scyllarus arctus to be identified among these larvae. Its morphology is described and illustrated. This constitutes the second complete description of a Scyllaridae phyllosoma with its specific identity being validated by molecular techniques (the first was S. pygmaeus). These results also solved a long lasting taxonomic anomaly of several species assigned to the ancient genus Phyllosoma Leach, 1814. Detailed examination indicated that the final-stage phyllosoma of S. arctus shows closer affinities with the American scyllarid Scyllarus depressus or with the Australian Scyllarus sp. b (sensu Phillips et al., 1981) than to its sympatric species S. pygmaeus

This work was supported by a pre-doctoral fellowship awarded by the Autonomous Government of Catalonia to F.P. (2006FIC-00082). Research was funded by projects CGL2006–13423 and CTM2007–66635 from the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia. The authors are part of the research group 2009SGR-636, 2009SGR-655 and 2009SGR-1364 of the Generalitat de Catalunya. F.P. acknowledges EU-Synthesys grant (GB-TAF-4474). Financial support was provided to Guillermo Guerao (post-doctoral fellowship) by the Ministry of Science and Education (INIA)

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