A review of Triops granarius (Lucas, 1864) sensu lato (Notostraca: Triopsidae) of southern Africa and Madagascar, with comments on the group

Abstract

Abstract We review the current knowledge surrounding the Triops granarius morphological species group globally, and present a revision of the southern African T. granarius forms based on collections from southern Africa and Madagascar. We also provide comparisons with other material of T. granarius from outside this region. We revise the morphological descriptions of T. numidicus (Grube, 1865) and T. namaquensis (Richters, 1886) using modern standards, and resurrect T. sakalavus  Nobili, 1905 from synonymy, using both morphological and molecular techniques. Morphological definitions focus primarily on the form of the apical portion of the thoracopod II endite. Differential diagnoses are presented for the three species, including characters that separate them from the other members with similar morphology. Furthermore, we treat T. dybowskii (Braem, 1893), T. orientalis (Tiwari, 1951), and T. mavliensis (Tiwari, 1951), which had been recently resurrected, as species inquirenda.