First report of kinorhynchs from singapore, with the description of three new species

Abstract

The kinorhynch fauna of Singapore, or from any locality close by, has never been explored. For the present study, samples of Kinorhyncha were collected at seven localities around Singapore. This revealed the presence of at least nine different species distributed across four genera. Two species, Echinoderes tchefouensis and Condyloderes paradoxus, are known from other localities in Asia, whereas the remaining seven species are new to science. Three of them, Centroderes impurus sp. nov., Echinoderes annae sp. nov., and Leiocanthus nagini sp. nov., are described, whereas materials representing the remaining, potentially new, species were too limited to allow complete descriptions.