Milnesium tardigradum Doyère, 1840

Li, Xiaochen, 2007, Tardigrades from the Tsinling Mountains, central China with descriptions of two new species of Echiniscidae (Tardigrada), Journal of Natural History 41 (41 - 44), pp. 2719-2739 : 2737

Milnesium tardigradum Doyère

Material examined

Twenty-eight specimens were collected from Ningshan County, 167 specimens from Mount Taibai .

Remarks

This species was reported as a new record for China from Beijing Municipality, Shanghai Municipality, Tianjin Municipality, Hebei Province, and Shanxi Province (Rahm 1936– 1937a, 1936–1937b, 1937). It was subsequently reported from Sechuan Province and Yunnan Province ( Beasley and Cleveland 1996), and from Sechuan Province again ( Beasley et al. 2006). My specimens fit the description of this species ( Ramazzotti and Maucci 1983; Tumanov 2006). It has never been reported from the Tsinling Mountains.

Compared with the Tardigrada faunae of other parts of China, the Tardigrada fauna of the Tsinling Mountains is characterized by much higher species diversity and by some native species. Over 100 species have previously been reported from China ( Li et al. 2007). The additional species listed here brings this total to nearly 120 species. Of these, 63 species have been found in the Tsinling Mountains. A total of 20 new records for China and 12 species new to science have been reported from the Tsinling Mountains ( Li et al. 2004, 2005a, 2005b, 2007; Li and Liu 2005; Li and Wang 2005a, 2005b, 2006; Wang and Li 2005, 2006).