Until 2021, the genus
Aurelia contained eleven described species (WoRMS, 2020), with many genetic species still awaiting a formal description. In 2021, ten new species of
Aurelia were described almost solely from genetic data in a novel attempt to use genetic characters as diagnostic characters for species descriptions, leaving seven genetic species still undescribed. Here we present the description of a new
Aurelia species from the Adriatic Sea using an integrative taxonomy approach, i.e., employing molecular as well as morphological characteristics in order to describe this new
Aurelia species. The species is described based on a single medusa sampled from the town of Rovinj (Croatia), North Adriatic, amidst combined blooms of the ctenophore
Mnemiopsis leidy and cnidarian
Aurelia solida in the summer of 2020. Based on genetic data, the newly described
Aurelia pseudosolida sp. nov. has never been sequenced in any of the previous investigations of the molecular diversity of
Aurelia. This is the second species belonging to Discomedusae described from the North Adriatic in little more than half a decade, which could be yet another indication of the susceptibility of the North Adriatic to proliferation of non-indigenous gelatinous species, especially if we take into account historical as well as recent blooms of suspected non-indigenous gelatinous species such as
Muggiaea atlantica,
Aurelia solida,
Mawia benovici and
Mnemiopsis leidy.
View Full-Text
►▼
Show Figures
This is an open access article distributed under the
Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited