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A new species of Syllis Grube, 1850 including transcriptomic data and an updated phylogeny of Syllinae (Annelida: Syllidae)

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Abstract

A new species of Syllis Grube, 1850 (Syllidae, Annelida) from marine aquaria is described in this study, including information about its life cycle, laboratory cultures, transcriptomic data, and an updated phylogeny of the group. Syllis malaquini sp. nov. is diagnosed by a slender body with a colour pattern consisting of dorsal dark lines on each segment and a dark stain on the anterior region of the prostomium, blades of falciger compound chaetae bidentate, with proximal and distal teeth of similar length, short dorsal cirri with alternation in length in the anterior body, one bidentate ventral simple chaeta and one dorsal simple chaeta with a distal notch in posterior parapodia, and thin pointed aciculae. Additionally, we present an updated molecular phylogeny of Syllinae, which indicates that Syllis malaquini sp. nov. clusters with specimens of Typosyllis gerundensis (Alós & Campoy, 1981), Syllis hyalina Grube, 1863, and Syllis armillaris (Müller, 1776) from the Mediterranean Sea. The new species is maintained in aquaria and petri dish cultures in the laboratory, and its life cycle was observed and documented. Syllis malaquini sp. nov. reproduces sexually by schizogamy and asexually by fission. Furthermore, transcriptomic data of the new species is provided as a useful tool for further studies and comparative approaches. Syllis malaquini sp. nov. is an interesting organism to study reproduction and regeneration in syllids.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Christoph Bleidorn and Stefan Schaffer who helped to set the aquaria at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and the University of Innsbruck with material from the University of Leipzig. We give special thanks to the curators Gert Tröster (ZMUG) and Javier Sánchez Almazán (MNCN) who provided us with catalogue numbers for the type series and additional material.

Funding

This study was funded by MINECO/ERDF, UE funds (Grant: CGL2015-63593-P, “Macroevolutionary transitions in Syllidae” project, PI: MTA). RPR is supported by the program “Contratos predoctorales para Formación de Personal Investigador, FPI-UAM,” Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. GPS is supported by the “Contratos Predoctorales para la Formación de Doctores 2016”, program of the MINECO, Spain (code: BES-2016-076419, co-financed by the European Social Found). BE was supported by a grant for young researchers from the University of Innsbruck.

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Correspondence to Rannyele Passos Ribeiro.

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All applicable international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for animal testing, animal care and use of animals were followed by the authors.

Sampling and field studies

The study does not contain sampling material or data from field studies.

Data availability

Raw reads used for transcriptome assembly are available at the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA): BioProject PRJNA565192. Assembly and Transdecoder predicted proteins can be accessed at GitHub: https://github.com/rannypribeiro/Syllis_malaquini_transcriptome.

Author contribution

RPR and MTA conceived and designed research. RPR and GP conducted experiments. RPR, GPS and MTA made microscopy imaging and analysed data. All authors were involved in the setup of aquaria and cultures. RPR wrote the first draft of the manuscript. MTA supervised the whole study. All authors discussed, wrote, and approved the manuscript.

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Communicated by D. Fiege

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Ribeiro, R.P., Ponz-Segrelles, G., Helm, C. et al. A new species of Syllis Grube, 1850 including transcriptomic data and an updated phylogeny of Syllinae (Annelida: Syllidae). Mar. Biodivers. 50, 31 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12526-020-01046-y

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