Alona Baird, 1843

Sinev, Artem Y., 2016, Key for identification of Cladocera of the subfamily Aloninae (Anomopoda: Chydoridae) from South-East Asia, Zootaxa 4200 (4), pp. 451-486 : 459

Alona Baird, 1843 s. lato.

Parthenogenetic female short description. Body oval, of moderate height, head and valves without a keel. Sculpture of valves variable. Posteroventral angle of valves without denticles. Rostrum short. Two or three main head pores with narrow connection between them, lateral head pores minute. Labral keel of variable morphology, with two clusters of setulae on posterior margin.

Postabdomen of moderate height and width, of variable shape. Preanal angle well defined, postanal angle not defined. Armament of postabdomen variable. Postabdominal claw curved, with short basal spine.

Antennule without lateral aesthetascs, all terminal aesthetascs of similar length. Antennal seta without basal peg. Antenna with thin seta on basal segment of endopodite. Spine on basal segment of exopodite shorter than middle segment. Spines on apical segments longer than apical segments. IDL of limb I of variable morphology.

Taxonomical notes. Alona s. lato is artificial group, which is currently actively revised (Van Damme & Dumont 2008ab; Van Damme et al. 2010, 2011; Sinev 2015; Sinev & Dumont 2016; Sousa et al. 2016 and others). Most species-groups of Alona s. lato were already transferred into separate genera. Of species recorded in the region, Alona archeri and A. cambouei were replaced to the genus Ovalona (Sinev, 2015) ; Alona costata and A. cheni to the genus Flavalona ( Sinev & Dumont, 2016); Alona diaphana to the genus Leberis ( Sinev et al., 2005) ; Alona freyi to the genus Matralona ( Sinev & Kotov 2012) ; Alona macronyx to the genus Celsinotium ( Sinev & Kotov 2012); Alona sarasinorum to the genus Salinalona (Van Damme & Maiphae, 2013); Alona siamensis tho the genus Magnospina ( Sousa et al. 2016); and Alona of verrucosa -group to the genus Anthalona ( Van Damme et al. 2011) .

Still, taxonomic status of many forms is still not clear, and they are included here in Alona s. lato. Only one South-East Asian species, A. kotovi , belongs to Alona s. str., which includes only species of quadrangularis -group (Sinev, 2012).