Anthalona, Van Damme, Sinev & Dumont, 2011

DAMME, KAY VAN, SINEV, ARTEM YU & DUMONT, HENRI J., 2011, Separation of Anthalona gen. n. from Alona Baird, 1843 (Branchiopoda: Cladocera: Anomopoda): morphology and evolution of scraping stenothermic alonines, Zootaxa 2875 (1), pp. 1-64 : 61

Future of Anthalona studies

The taxonomic situation of Anthalona gen. n. remains complex. A. lineolata from China and A. alonopsiformis from the Philippines still need evaluation. We currently count seven species of Anthalona , but the genus will grow larger. Records of Anthalona appear as Alona verrucosa in literature worldwide and more research of East Asian (e.g., Rajapaksa & Fernando 1982; Dumont & Van De Velde 1977), Australian and African Anthalona are likely to reveal additional species. In particular, status of Australian and South East Asian populations should be examined further; we did not study these regions sufficiently although the A. verrucosa -group is common here and there is no name available for the Australian populations, which may well be different from A. obtusa n. sp. (or more species may be present). We did encounter more new species that were not incorporated in this study. Brief examination of specimens from Nepal, samples of Dumont & Van De Velde (1977) for example, showed that these populations cannot be assigned to any of the species described herein. Furthermore, during finalization of this manuscript, we encountered two clearly different, unnamed species of Anthalona , one from Thailand (Sinev, pers. obs.) and another from Brazil (from Amazon; A. Ghidini, pers. obs.). So, even in South America, new findings should not be surprising. Anthalona gen. n. is therefore more speciose than presented here. More data on ecology should also be gathered; in particular sympatry of the Neotropical species A. acuta and A. verrucosa (and even A. brandorffi ) is interesting, to study niche separation of sympatric chydorids in a single small pool with externally different characters.