Maindroniidae

Maindroniidae is a very small family of silverfish, basal insects belonging to the order Zygentoma. It contains just a single genus, Maindronia, and a handful of species.

Maindroniidae
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Zygentoma
Family: Maindroniidae
Escherich, 1905
Genus: Maindronia
Bouvier, 1897
Species include

Four species of these insects are found in some of the driest deserts on Earth: in Sudan, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Atacama Desert on the west coast of Chile. The distribution of these closely related species suggests that Maindronia is a Gondwanan relict group.[1] A new species in this family was recently discovered in Hormozgan province, Iran.[2]

Maindronia currently comprises four described species:

  • Maindronia bashagardensis Smith & Molero-Baltanás, 2020 - Iran
  • Maindronia beieri Schremmer, 1964 – North Africa
  • Maindronia mascatensis Bouvier, 1897 – Middle East
  • Maindronia neotropicalis Bouvier, 1897 – Peru and Chile

Recent findings from a phylogenetic study using the Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I and the 18S genes showed that Maindronia neotropicalis, inhabiting the Chilean Atacama desert, is in fact an assemblage of five genetic lineages that diverged from a common ancestor around 15 million years ago. All of these five lineages are likely well-separated species, and they await formal description.[1][3]

References
  1. Zúñiga-Reinoso, Alvaro; Reinhard, Predel (2019). "Past climatic changes and their effects on the phylogenetic pattern of the Gondwanan relict Maindronia (Insecta: Zygentoma) in the Chilean Atacama Desert". Global and Planetary Change. 182. doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2019.103007.
  2. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-new-species-of-Maindronia-Bouvier%2C-1897-from-Iran-Smith-Molero-Baltan%C3%A1s/713ffbbcb971acc1d37ba87894210d17402a1ccd
  3. Reinhard Predel, Jan Voelkel: Life at the limit: creatures similar to silverfish discovered in Earth’s driest desert. University of Cologne. Press release as of March 24, 2020


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.