Sistemática de Artotrogidae Brady, 1880 (Copepoda: Siphonostomatoida)

Abstract

Copepods are little crustaceans with an immense abundance and diversity, that colonized successfully the most of the aquatic habitats, and stablished as an essential part of the food chain. About half of the known species live associated with almost all metazoans phyla. Those of the order Siphonostomatoida exhibit a mouth structure specialized on drawn food from its hots's body. Artotrogidae, specially, had its classification extensively discussed on the last century. Although, but a significant part of its genera was described more than a century ago, with gaps, and most of it was not reanalyzed with most recent taxonomical tools or were object of a phylogenetic analysis. Thus, this work aims to conduct the taxonomic study of Artotrogidae, and perform a phylogenetic analysis to stablish phylogenetic relationship hypothesis and a better understanding of potential evolutionary trends. As results, on chapter 1 we describe a new Artotrogid genus that differs from others mostly for its unique first leg morphology. On chapter 2, we described a new species of Bradypontius, redescribed Artotrogus sarsi Kim I.H., 1996 e Dyspontius striatus Thorell, 1859, revised the diagnosis of 11 family genera, and discussed the distribution and the association of those animals with a wide range of marine invertebrates. And on chapter 3, we proposed a phylogenetic relationship hypothesis based on 103 morphological characters where we present the subdivision of the family on two new subfamilies, Subfamily nov. 1 and Subfamily nov. 2; the genus Discopontius is stablished as belonging to the family Artotrogidae, and the major evolutionary trends observed on the body shape and on appendages morphology are presented and discussed.