Rhinodrilidae Benham, 1890

Misirlioğlu, Mete, Reynolds, John Warren, Stojanović, Mirjana, Trakić, Tanja, Sekulić, Jovana, James, Samuel W., Csuzdi, Csaba, Decaëns, Thibaud, Lapied, Emmanuel, Phillips, Helen R. P., Cameron, Erin K. & Brown, George G., 2023, Earthworms (Clitellata, Megadrili) of the world: an updated checklist of valid species and families, with notes on their distribution, Zootaxa 5255 (1), pp. 417-438 : 428

Rhinodrilidae Benham, 1890

Recent changes in classification ( James & Davidson 2012) moved many genera from Glossoscolecidae to Rhinodrilidae (James 2012) . This family now includes 38 genera and some 376 species (plus seven subspecies) including one widespread invasive species, Pontoscolex corethrurus (M̧ller), probably the most widely distributed earthworm in the world ( James 2011; Taheri et al. 2018b). Native species of this family occur from Argentina ( Mischis 2007) up to Mexico ( Fragoso & Rojas 2014), including several on Caribbean Islands ( Rodríguez et al. 2007), although none are known from Chile ( Zicsi & Csuzdi 2007). Studies on the genetic diversity of several Pontoscolex species highlighted the importance of proper identification of P. corethrurus , requiring at least barcoding, to certify species status ( Taheri et al. 2018a). Species belonging to P. corethrurus must conform to the genetic lineage L1, as identified in Taheri et al. (2018a) and James et al. (2019). The genus Martiodrilus with 88 known species and subspecies is the most speciose, occurring from Panama in the north to Peru in the south, and to French Guyana in the east ( Fragoso & Brown 2007), with a large number of species still to be found with additional sampling efforts in Amazonia and the Andes region. The following other speciose Rhinodrilidae genera by decreasing order of species richness are: Rhinodrilus (52 spp./sspp.), Andiorrhinus (48 spp./sspp.) and Andiodrilus (40 spp./sspp.). Together with Rhinodrilus , Martiodrilus is also remarkable for the presence of several very large-bodied earthworm species ( Brown & James 2007; Zicsi 2007). One other widespread species of Rhinodrilidae is worth mentioning here: Urobenus brasiliensis Benham , found in Paraguay ( Brown & Fragoso, 2007) and in Brazil from Manaus in the Amazon (R̂mbke et al. 1999; Zicsi et al. 2001) to Pelotas in the Pampa biome ( Santos et al. 2019). This cryptic species requires further morphological and molecular work in order to separate the many genetic lineages that have little morphological differentiation ( da Silva et al. 2017). Furthermore, the genus Alexidrilus Righi , was recently synonymized with Urobenus Benham , and its two species, A. lourdesae Righi and A. littoralis Ljungstr ̂m, with U. brasiliensis ( Ferreira et al. 2023) .