An updated species list for "Smoky Bears": Tardigrades of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, USA.

One of the largest inventories of tardigrades ever conducted occurred from 20002010 in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, USA. Over 16,000 specimens were catalogued, 85 species were identified, 11 species new to science were described, and 16 other possible new species await further study. More than 20 papers have resulted from the GSMNP tardigrade inventory, making the Smokies the most thoroughly studied area in North America for tardigrades.

Integrative taxonomy resolves species identities within the Macrobiotus pallarii complex (Eutardigrada: Macrobiotidae).

The taxonomy of many groups of meiofauna is challenging due to their low number of diagnostic morphological characters and their small body size. Therefore, with the advent of molecular techniques that provide a new source of traits, many cryptic species have started to be discovered. Tardigrades are not an exception, and many once thought to be cosmopolitan taxa are being found to be complexes of phenotypically similar species.

Batillipes pennaki Marcus, 1946 (Arthrotardigrada: Batillipedidae): deciphering a species complex.

Batillipes pennaki has been considered a common and a cosmopolitan marine tardigrade species. However, the original diagnosis of this species is very incomplete, and consequently there is a high probability of incorrect records. Therefore, a comparative analysis of quantitative and qualitative morphological characters among eight different populations from the Atlantic basin was done in this study to investigate if B.

Marine tardigrades of the Bahamas with the description of two new species and updated keys to the species of Anisonyches and Archechiniscus.

This is the first survey of subtidal marine tardigrades from the Bahamas, and we compare our results with earlier studies of Bahamian intertidal habitats. In 2011 and 2014 we collected 60 subtidal sand samples from Bimini, the Berry Islands, New Providence, Eleuthera, and the Exumas. We found 11 species only one of which, Dipodarctus subterraneus (Renaud-Debyser, 1959), had been found in the previous intertidal Bahamian collections.

A Hypothesis for the Composition of the Tardigrade Brain and its Implications for Panarthropod Brain Evolution.

Incredibly disparate brain types are found in Metazoa, which raises the question of how this disparity evolved. Ecdysozoa includes representatives that exhibit ring-like brains-the Cycloneuralia-and representatives that exhibit ganglionic brains-the Panarthropoda (Euarthropoda, Onychophora, and Tardigrada). The evolutionary steps leading to these distinct brain types are unclear.

The Zoogeography of Marine Tardigrada.

This monograph describes the global records of marine water bears (Phylum Tardigrada). We provide a comprehensive list of marine tardigrades recorded from around the world, providing an up-to-date taxonomy and a complete bibliography accompanied by geographic co-ordinates, habitat, substrate and biogeographic comments. A link is provided to an on-line interactive map where all occurrences for each species are shown.

New records of marine tardigrades from Moorea, French Polynesia, with the description of Styraconyx turbinarium sp. nov. (Arthrotardigrada, Halechiniscidae).

Five marine arthrotardigrade species are recorded from Moorea, Society Islands, French Polynesia. Four were collected from coral sand; two, Dipodarctus anaholiensis Pollock, 1995 and Florarctus kwoni Chang & Rho, 1997, are new records for the region, and two, Halechiniscus perfectus Schulz, 1955 and Styraconyx kristenseni kristenseni Renaud-Mornant, 1981, have been previously reported. The fifth, a new species Styraconyx turbinarium sp.

The genus Milnesium (Tardigrada: Eutardigrada: Milnesiidae) in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (North Carolina and Tennessee, USA), with the description of Milnesium bohleberi sp. nov.

For many decades the genus Milnesium was thought to consist of a single, cosmopolitan species: Milnesium tardigradum Doyère, 1840. However, recently the genus has been re-evaluated, and numerous new species have been described. Currently, over twenty extant species and one fossil are recognised, and most appear to have very narrow geographic ranges.

Aquatic tardigrades in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina and Tennessee, U.S.A., with the description of a new species of Thulinius (Tardigrada, Isohypsibiidae).

As part of the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (http://www.dlia.org), an extensive survey of tardigrades has been conducted in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) in Tennessee and North Carolina, U.