Palatov D.M., Marin I.N. 2021. When males and females belong to different genera: an interesting case of Synurella/Pontonyx (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Crangonyctidae) co-occurrence // Arthropoda Selecta. Vol.30. No.4: 443–472 [in English].
A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of RAS, Moscow 119071, Russia. E-mails: triops@yandex.ru , coralliodecapoda@mail.ru
doi: 10.15298/arthsel.30.4.03
ABSTRACT. The article describes two interesting cases of co-occurrence of the representatives of different crangonyctid genera (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Crangonyctidae) in the Western Georgia (Caucasus), resembling heterosexual pairs with strong sexual dimorphism. However, using an integrative approach, we describe four new species, by one of the genera Synurella Wrześniowski, 1877 and Pontonyx Palatov et Marin, 2021 from each locality. The discovered species differ genetically and morphologically from the known species from both genera. Despite the presence of a relatively large amount of material, it did not allow us to find individuals of the opposite sex for any of the described species. We believe that a number of such “couples” have already been described from the northern Turkey and other area around Black Sea, where the genus Pontonyx is distributed. Moreover, such an example of the co-occurrence of two crangonyctid genera is described for the first time, previously crangonyctids were found together with other subterranean crustaceans, for example, niphargids (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Niphargidae), but never together with other crangonyctids.
KEY WORDS: Crustacea, Amphipoda, diversity, Caucasus, Colchis lowland, Black Sea.