FIRST CYTOGENETIC STUDY OF A MEMBER OF THE HARVESTMAN FAMILY NEOGOVEIDAE (OPILIONES: CYPHOPHTHALMI: STERNOPHTHALMI) FROM CAMEROON WITH DESCRIPTION OF A NEW SPECIES PAROGOVIA PARASIRONOIDES SP. NOV.
Abstract
The harvestman family Neogoveidae (suborder Cyphophthalmi) is distributed across Neotropics, south-eastern USA and Western and Central Africa. Nevertheless, the core of its known diversity lies in Americas.
The sole genus known from Africa is Parogovia, with only three species described so far. Here we describe a new species, Parogovia parasironoides sp. nov. from Cameroon, which is morphologically close to P. sironoides.
In addition to the analyses of external morphology, spermatopositor and ovipositor, we also described the karyotype (2n =32), a course of the male mitosis and meiosis, and the distribution of major ribosomal RNA genes using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) with 18S rDNA probe. In the karyotype, the one-armed chromosomes predominated and we detected one pair of the 18S rDNA cluster close to centromere region on long arms of subtelocentric chromosomes.
Our study represents the first cytogenetic data in infraorder Sternophthalmi and plays an important role in the reconstruction of the karyotype evolution of Cyphophthalmi.