Atlas of the Echiniscidae (Heterotardigrada) of the Worldpart I: West Palaearctic Echiniscus species.

Traditionally Eurocentric tardigrade taxonomy has started to dissect endemics from very few truly cosmopolitan or widely distributed species, originally described mostly from the West Palaearctic, in the last decade. Obviously, the most problematic for taxonomic identification are species in large genera containing over 100 species in the case of Tardigrada. In limno-terrestrial heterotardigrades, only Echiniscus C.

Meridioniscus Gsiorek, Vonina & Michalczyk, subgen. nov. (Heterotardigrada: Echiniscidae).

N/A.

Echiniscidae (Heterotardigrada) of South Africa.

The first publications on the Afrotropical tardigrade fauna date back to the beginning of the 20th century. However, the knowledge on the faunal composition, diversity and evolution of African tardigrades, including the speciose family Echiniscidae, is still fragmentary. Here, we present an extensive systematic, biogeographic, and ecological survey of echiniscid fauna of the southernmost part of the Afrotropical realm.