Phylogeny of the freshwater copepod Mesocyclops (Crustacea: Cyclopidae) based on combined molecular and morphological data, with notes on biogeography.

We combined molecular and morphological characters in a copepod taxon for which obtaining a sufficiently high number of characters that evolve at different rates is a challenge. Few molecular markers are known to resolve evolutionary relationships in the copepods, and thus there is potential for morphology to contribute substantially to phylogenetic reconstruction. We used a morphology based tree of the entire Mesocyclops genus to guide our taxon sampling of 10 species for molecular and combined analyses. Morphology including polymorphic characters, 18S rDNA, and ITS2 sequences were analyzed using parsimony, ML, and Bayesian methods. Strong similarities among topologies were observed regardless of the character type or algorithm, with higher levels of support obtained in combined data analyses. In combined analyses Old World species formed a monophyletic group and New World species formed a paraphyletic group in this freshwater, predominantly (sub)tropical genus. Mesocyclops darwini was the single taxon whose relationships showed conflict among the previous reconstructions using only morphological characters and the tree inferred from the combined data set. Support for these alternative positions of M. darwini were compared using constraint tests, with the result supporting monophyly of Old World taxa.

An annotated checklist of freshwater Copepoda (Crustacea, Hexanauplia) from continental Ecuador and the Galapagos Archipelago.

An annotated checklist of the free-living freshwater Copepoda recorded in different regions in Ecuador (including the Amazon, the Andes, the coastal region, and the Galapagos Islands) is here provided. We revised all published records, critically evaluated the validity of each taxon and provided short taxonomic and biogeographical remarks for each one. A total of 27 taxa have been reported, including species and records at the generic level only. The species and taxa identified only up to the generic level belong to five families and 14 genera. The Cyclopoida is the most diverse group with 16 records belonging to species (or identified to the generic level only) and eight genera, followed by the Harpacticoida with six species, one identification to the generic level only, and four genera, and Calanoida with four species belonging to two genera. A total of 18 taxa are recorded for the Andes. Six have been recorded in the Amazon, two are recorded for the coastal region, and six for the Galapagos. One species is shared between the Amazon and the Andes. One species is shared between the coastal region and the Amazon. Seventeen are only reported from the Andes and four are only reported from the Amazon. At the current status of the knowledge, any attempt to analyze and generalize distributional patterns of copepods in Ecuador is premature due to the scarcity of available information, and evidently there is an urgent need for more extensive field collections. A few working hypothesis for future studies are identified.