Armillipora suapiensis Ježek, Oboňa & Le Pont, 2020

Armillipora suapiensis Ježek, Oboňa & Le Pont, 2020: 422 (description).

Differential diagnosis

Based on the original description of Ježek et al. (2020), Armillipora suapiensis can be easily separated from all the other species of the genus by the following characteristics: eye bridge with five rows of facets (four rows of facets in other species); more than six cylindrical tenacula present in epandrial appendage in A. suapiensis (six or less cylindrical tenacula present in other species); gonocoxites not fused in A. suapiensis (fused in other species); parameres not fused and outwardly curved in A. suapiensis (fused in other species), aedeagus around twice as long as ejaculatory apodeme in A. suapiensis (about same length of ejaculatory apodeme in other species); ejaculatory apodeme with pointed anterior margin in A. suapiensis (rounded anterior margin in other species) (see Ježek et al. 2020).

Material examined

None.

Distribution

Bolivia (Ježek et al. 2020).

Key to the males of Armillipora

1. Eye bridge with five facet rows; more than six tenacula on the epandrial appendage; gonocoxites not fused............................................................................. A. suapiensis Ježek, Oboňa & Le Pont, 2020

– Eye bridge with four facet rows; six or fewer tenacula on the epandrial appendage; gonocoxites fused................................................................................................................................................... 2

2. The interocular suture with short posterior spur (Fig. 6A); gonocoxal condyles triangular-shaped and protruding beyond base of ejaculatory apodeme ............................................. A. selvica Quate, 1996

– Interocular suture without posterior spur (Figs 1A, 3A); gonocoxal condyles not triangular-shaped and not protruding beyond base of ejaculatory apodeme.................................................................. 3

3. Gonocoxites fused, forming U-shaped sclerite, with concavity at lower margin, gonocoxites without preapical lumps, each containing six preapical setae (Figs 1C, 2B); epandrial appendage in lateral view with line of four short and cylindrical tenacula, with additional tenaculum placed on separate projection of epandrial appendage (Fig. 2E) .......................................................... A. imitata sp. nov.

– Gonocoxites fused, forming V-shaped sclerite (Figs 3C, 4B), each with preapical lump, each containing three to four setae; epandrial appendage in lateral view with line of five short and cylindrical tenacula without additional projections on epandrial appendage (Fig. 4G) ...................... ................................................................................................................................. A. muyu sp. nov.

Genetics

Barcoded specimens of Armillipora imitata sp. nov. have an intraspecific uncorrected pairwise distance for COI sequences of 1.06 %. Similarly, specimens of A. muyu sp. nov. have an uncorrected pairwise distance of 3.04 %, and specimens of A. selvica show an uncorrected pairwise distance 3.80 %. The interspecific uncorrected pairwise distances are higher, for instance A. muyu has a maximum interspecific uncorrected pairwise distance of 9.57 % (9.57–9.11 %) with A. imitata and 10.03 % (10.03–8.81 %) with A. selvica . In a similar manner, A. imitata has a maximum uncorrected pairwise distance of 5.92 % (5.92–5.02) compared to A. selvica (Table 2). All sequenced specimens cluster well into morphological taxa in the NJ tree (Fig. 7).

Species distribution model

We gathered a total of 76 geographical records for all the species of Armillipora ( A. imitata sp. nov. n = 3; A. muyu sp. nov. n = 7; A. selvica n = 55; and A. suapiensis n = 11), mainly from the original descriptions. Thirty-six records had exact geographical coordinates, while 40 records were lacking the exact geographical coordinates and these were adjusted based on the reported locality (Table 1).

The species of Armillipora are currently reported in five countries, namely Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Panama (Table 1), and our model shows that the genus can be present in several more countries in the Neotropical region, extending towards North America (Fig. 8). Still, the highest probability of presence is concentrated in Central America and northern South America (Fig. 8).