A review of the Entocytheridae (Ostracoda) of the world: updated bibliographic and species checklists and global georeferenced database, with insights into host specificity and latitudinal patterns of species richness

Abstract

The creation of biodiversity datasets freely available for the scientific community is a valuable task to stimulate global research on biodiversity. Among others, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is a remarkable resource providing free online access to biodiversity data on many diverse taxonomic groups (including Ostracoda) from both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. More specific databases for Ostracoda georeferenced data have been built (e.g., NACODe and OMEGA), some with freely available data. However, the Entocytheridae, a family of ostracods living commensal on other crustaceans, with 220 living species, representing the third non-marine ostracod family in number of species, has been remarkably under-represented in the currently available biodiversity databases. To cover this gap, we present here a free-access world database of Entocytheridae published in GBIF and review the current knowledge of the group by updating a bibliographic and species checklists of the Entocytheridae. We also analyse the host specificity of the group and the latitudinal species richness pattern in North and Central America (including 186 spp.). The current database includes 3509 georeferenced records from 220 species, in contrast to just 44 entocytherid georeferenced records previously published in GBIF. In addition, the updated species list accounts for 43 species and 2 genera that were not included in the previous compendium on Entocytheridae published by Hart & Hart in 1974, so as 40 species not included in the 2013 Checklist provided by the Catalogue of Life. We show that the specialisation in one unique host species is not the rule in Entocytheridae, and evidence an unusual latitudinal pattern of species richness in North and Central American entocytherids, most probably related to the biogeographic history of their hosts.