title: Global biodiversity and phylogenetic evaluation of remipedia (crustacea).
abstract: Remipedia is one of the most recently discovered classes of crustaceans, first described in 1981 from anchialine caves in the Bahamas Archipelago. The class is divided into the order Enantiopoda, represented by two fossil species, and Nectiopoda, which contains all known extant remipedes. Since their discovery, the number of nectiopodan species has increased to 24, half of which were described during the last decade. Nectiopoda exhibit a disjunct global distribution pattern, with the highest abundance and diversity in the Caribbean region, and isolated species in the Canary Islands and in Western Australia. Our review of Remipedia provides an overview of their ecological characteristics, including a detailed list of all anchialine marine caves, from which species have been recorded. We discuss alternative hypotheses of the phylogenetic position of Remipedia within Arthropoda, and present first results of an ongoing molecular-phylogenetic analysis that do not support the monophyly of several nectiopodan taxa. We believe that a taxonomic revision of Remipedia is absolutely essential, and that a comprehensive revision should include a reappraisal of the fossil record.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Animal Ecology and Cell Biology, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Hannover, Germany. marco.neiber@tiho-hannover.de
authors.forename: Marco T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Neiber
authors.forename: Tamara R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Hartke
authors.forename: Torben
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Stemme
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bergmann
authors.forename: Jes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rust
authors.forename: Thomas M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Iliffe
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Koenemann
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D003445:Crustacea / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D010802:Phylogeny