Gammarus minus: Geographic Variation and Description of New Subspecies G. m. pinicollis (Crustacea, Amphipoda)

1970 ◽  
Vol 89 (4) ◽  
pp. 514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald A. Cole
2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-26
Author(s):  
MICHAEL A. PATTEN ◽  
ALEXANDRA A. BARNARD ◽  
BRENDA D. SMITH

The geographic distribution of Gomphurus ozarkensis (Westfall, 1975), a species described to science only four decades ago, is confined to a four-state area in the central United States: southeastern Kansas, eastern Oklahoma, western and northern Arkansas, and southern Missouri. Its small range has led some to classify it a species of conservation concern. We examined geographic variation in the species, which despite its small range exists in three distinct subpopulations: one in the Ouachita Mountains of western Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma; one on the Ozark Plateau of northeastern Oklahoma, southeastern-most Kansas, southern Missouri, and northern Arkansas; and one in the Osage/Flint hills of southeastern Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma. Clinal variation is evident in the extent of yellow on the terminal abdominal segments and the extent to which certain thoracic stripes are fused. A population in a separate watershed basin in the southern Osage Hills of Oklahoma is taxonomically distinct, with some phenotypic characters tending toward G. externus (Hagen, 1858). We describe this population as a new subspecies of G. ozarkensis. 


Telopea ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne Gebert ◽  
Marco Duretto

2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (6) ◽  
pp. 1837-1846 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor E Diersing

Abstract The long-tailed shrew, Sorex dispar Batchelder, 1911, and Gaspe shrew, S. gaspensis Anthony and Goodwin, 1924, from the Appalachian Mountains of North America have been characterized as genetically highly similar, and that one is morphologically a clinal variate of the other, i.e., there is a single species. I measured 24 characters of the skull on 196 shrews from throughout the range of the species. Geographic variation in skull shape and size was not gradual or continuous, but abrupt. These abrupt changes in morphology are associated with major water barriers, primarily the Connecticut River, middle Saint John River, and the Strait of Canso, which separates mainland Nova Scotia from Cape Breton Island. The morphological analyses presented here and previous genetic studies indicate that S. dispar and S. gaspensis are likely conspecific. Shrews with the largest skull occur from North Carolina north to Vermont and are referable to S. d. dispar with S. d. blitchi as a synonym. Shrews from New Hampshire northeast to southern New Brunswick and mainland Nova Scotia have a medium-sized skull and are referable to a new subspecies. Those from northern New Brunswick, Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec, and Cape Breton Island have a small skull and are referable to S. d. gaspensis. The skull morphology of S. d. gaspensis and the new subspecies are more similar to each other than to S. d. dispar. Results of this study differ from those of previous morphological studies because measurement error and within-group variation were reduced, which allowed for visibility of otherwise “hidden” between-group differences, or geographic variation.


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