Bertolanius portucalensis Fontoura, Pilato, Lisi & Morais, 2009, sp. nov.
Creators: name: Fontoura, Paulo
name: Pilato, Giovanni
name: Lisi, Oscar
name: Morais, Paulo
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2009
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Tardigrada
Eutardigrada
Parachela
Eohypsibiidae
Bertolanius
Bertolanius portucalensis

description: Bertolanius portucalensis sp. nov.   
Figs. 3, 4  
 Material examined: Four specimens, one of them in simplex stage, and one egg from a moss sample collected in Amarante, northern Portugal (November 2005). Three specimens and the egg were mounted in Hoyer’s medium and one specimen in polyvinyl lactophenol.   
 Type repository: The holotype (slide N. 5234) and the egg (slide N. 5235) are deposited in the collection of Binda and Pilato (Museo del Dipartimento di Biologia Animale “Marcello La Greca”, Università di Catania); the three paratypes (slides BI-13 to BI-15) in the collection of P. Fontoura (Department of Zoology and Anthropology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto).   
 Specific diagnosis: Cuticle without pores but with very small round tubercles difficult to see; eye spots present; buccal tube wide; buccal armature with 14 peribuccal lamellae, an anterior band of tiny teeth difficult to see, a broad posterior band of teeth followed by a system of dorsal and ventral transverse ridges; the mediodorsal and the medio-ventral ridges are subdivided into two large square-shaped teeth. Pharyngeal bulb with apophyses and three macroplacoids. Slender claws with well developed accessory points on main branches.   
All claws with lunules, very large on the fourth pair of legs. Eggs with high membranous, finely reticulated ridges forming a reticulate design with large meshes on the egg shell.  
 Description of the holotype: Body length 630 µm, colorless; eye spots present; cuticle without pores but with small round tubercles difficult to see (Fig. 3A). Buccal cavity terminal, very wide (25.0 µm), surrounded by fourteen peribuccal lamellae followed by a band of hardly visible tiny teeth. A well evident posterior ring of irregularly distributed teeth is also present (Fig. 3B); the teeth of the anterior row are well aligned. Behind that band of teeth a system of three dorsal and three ventral transverse ridges is present (Figs. 3 B, C). The latero-dorsal and latero-ventral ridges are elongated; the median ridges are subdivided into two robust square teeth (Fig. 3B). Rigid buccal tube 58.1 µm long and 12.1 µm wide externally (pt = 20.8). Stylet supports inserted on the buccal tube wall at 79.5 % of its length (pt = 79.5). Pharyngeal bulb with apophyses and three rod-shaped macroplacoids (Fig. 3B). Microplacoid absent. The first and the second macroplacoid are very close to each other. The first and third macroplacoid show the characteristic shape of one inverted “one” as described by Dastych (1972). The second macroplacoid is the shortest and the third the longest. First macroplacoid 10.6 µm long (pt = 18.2), second 10.2 µm (pt = 17.6), third 12.4 µm long (pt = 21.3); entire macroplacoid row 37.2 µm long (pt = 64.0).   
 The claws, of Bertolanius type, (Figs. 3C, D), are slender, with well developed accessory points on the main branches; external and internal claws of the third pair of legs 20.1 µm long (pt = 34.6) and 18.3 µm (pt = 31.5) respectively. Posterior and anterior claws of the hind legs 24.1 µm long (pt = 41.5) and 19.6 µm long (pt = 33.7) respectively. Small, smooth lunules are present on legs I to III, larger and gently curled on legs IV (Fig. 3D). A thickened cuticular bar is present near the lunules on the legs I–III (Fig. 3C).   
The eggs, freely laid, are spherical, with some high finely reticulated membranous ridges forming veils (Figs. 4C, D) connected to one another and therefore forming an evident reticular design with large meshes on the egg shell (Figs. 4A, B). At the margin of the egg, folds of the membranous ridges may seem to be conical processes, but a careful observation demonstrates that this is only an appearance. Diameter of the egg 93.5 µm without the membranous ridges, about 118 µm including these structures.  
The paratypes are similar to the holotype in both qualitative and metric characters (Table 3).  
 Etymology: The name portucalensis refers to the locus typicus, Portugal.   
 Differential diagnosis: Only six species of the genus Bertolanius have been described until now. All of them are extremely similar to each other, showing small differences in some characters of the buccal armature, claws and eggs. Some of them are very difficult to distinguish from one another without eggs, and some of them also have similar eggs.   
 TABLE 3. Measurements (in µm) of some structures of the studied specimens of Bertolanius portucalensis sp. nov. Bertolanius portucalensis sp. nov. differs from all the known species of the genus in the presence of very small cuticular round tubercles; the other species have smooth cuticle (only B. mahunkai (Iharos, 1971), according to the original description, has cuticular dots forming two longitudinal bands). B. weglarskae and, probably, B. mahunkai excluded, the new species also differs from the other species of the genus, in the characters of the egg.   
 In addition, the new species differs as follows from the other species of the genus: it differs from B. volubilis (Durante-Pasa and Maucci, 1975) in having three macroplacoids instead of two, width of the buccal tube almost uniform while in B. volubilis the anterior portion is clearly wider than the posterior one (see Durante Pasa & Maucci, 1975, Fig. 3), and both the medio-dorsal and medio-ventral ridges of the buccal armature subdivided into two large teeth.   
 It differs from B. nebulosus (Dastych, 1983) also in some characters of the buccal armature (both the medio-dorsal and medio-ventral ridges of the buccal armature are subdivided into two large teeth; the anterior teeth of the posterior band of teeth are larger, surely not smaller, than the posterior ones).   
 Bertolanius portucalensis sp. nov. differs from B. smreczynskii also in having shorter macroplacoids, the second macroplacoid shorter than the first one, and lunules on the legs IV curled.   
 It differs from B. markevichi (Biserov, 1992) also in having eye spots, buccal tube longer with respect to the body length and lower values of the pt index relative to the placoids and claws (Table 4), and lunules on the legs IV curled.   
 The new species differs from B. mahunkai in having slightly wider buccal tube and the second macroplacoid shorter than the first one.   
 The new species differs from B. weglarskae in having wider buccal tube and both the medio-dorsal and medio-ventral ridges subdivided into two large teeth. The egg of Bertolanius portucalensis sp. nov. is very similar to that of B. weglarskae. Dastych (1972), in the description of this species, wrote that the veil is granulated. But in his monograph of 1988 (page 105) corrected this detail and specified: “veil covered with a network of very tiny meshes”. We examined eggs kindly send by this author collected from Tatry, and we confirm that the veil is finely reticulated.   
 Associated species: Echiniscus quadrispinosus (Richters, 1902); Pseudechiniscus suillus (Ehrenberg, 1853); Macrobiotus crenulatus; M. cf. harmsworthi Murray, 1907 a; M. hufelandi; Isohypsibius prosostomus Thulin, 1928; Hypsibius convergens (Urbanowicz, 1925); Hypsibius seychellensis; Diphascon (Diphascon) pingue; Astatumen trinacriae (Arcidiacono, 1962) and Milnesium tardigradum.   
* Measurements according Biserov, 1992
description: Published as part of Fontoura, Paulo, Pilato, Giovanni, Lisi, Oscar & Morais, Paulo, 2009, Tardigrades from Portugal: four new records and description of two new species, pp. 21-38 in Zootaxa 2030 on pages 27-31, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.186243