Pseudechiniscus bartkei Węglarska, 1962

Tumanov, DV, 2020, Analysis of non-morphometric morphological characters used in the taxonomy of the genus Pseudechiniscus (Tardigrada: Echiniscidae), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 188, pp. 753-775 : 770

Pseudechiniscus bartkei Węglarska, 1962

This species was described by Węglarska (1962) from Vietnam. The presence of a trilobed median plate 1 is sometimes considered to be a distinctive character for this species (e.g. in Kendall-Fite & Nelson, 1996). This seems to be the result of an erroneous attribution ofWęglarska’s drawings in the authoritative 20 th- century monographs on tardigrade taxonomy ( Ramazzotti, 1972; Ramazzotti & Maucci, 1983). In fact, a trilobed first median plate is characteristic of P. bartkei forma unilobata described in the same publication. This form may actually belong to another, undescribed species because of its differences from the nominative form of P. bartkei (a single median process of the pseudosegmental plate instead of two, and longer cirrus A).