Misplaced Pages

Maindroniidae
Maindronia bashagardensis
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Zygentoma
Family:	Maindroniidae Escherich, 1905
Genus:	Maindronia Bouvier, 1897
Species
Maindronia bashagardensis Maindronia beieri Maindronia mascatensis Maindronia neotropicalis

Maindroniidae is a very small family of silverfish, basal insects belonging to the order Zygentoma. It contains just a single genus, Maindronia, and a handful of species.

Four species of these insects are found in some of the driest deserts on Earth: in Sudan, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Atacama Desert on the west coast of Chile. The distribution of these closely related species suggests that Maindronia is a Gondwanan relict group. A new species in this family was recently discovered in Hormozgan province, Iran.

Maindronia currently comprises four described species:

• Maindronia bashagardensis Smith & Molero-Baltanás, 2020 – Iran
• Maindronia beieri Schremmer, 1964 – Sudan
• Maindronia mascatensis Bouvier, 1897 – Oman and UAE
• Maindronia neotropicalis Bouvier, 1897 – Peru and Chile

Recent findings from a phylogenetic study using the Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I and the 18S genes showed that Maindronia neotropicalis, inhabiting the Chilean Atacama desert, is in fact an assemblage of five genetic lineages that diverged from a common ancestor around 15 million years ago. All of these five lineages are likely well-separated species, and they await formal description.

References

1. ^ Zúñiga-Reinoso, Alvaro; Predel, Reinhard (November 2019). "Past climatic changes and their effects on the phylogenetic pattern of the Gondwanan relict Maindronia (Insecta: Zygentoma) in the Chilean Atacama Desert". Global and Planetary Change. 182: 103007. Bibcode:2019GPC...18203007Z. doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2019.103007. S2CID 202193978.
2. ^ Smith, Graeme B.; Molero-Baltanás, Rafael; Jaberhashemi, Seyed Aghil; Rafinejad, Javad (11 March 2020). "A new species of Maindronia Bouvier, 1897 from Iran (Zygentoma: Maindroniidae)" (PDF). Records of the Australian Museum. 72 (1): 9–21. doi:10.3853/j.2201-4349.72.2020.1760. S2CID 214697188.
3. "Life at the limit: creatures similar to silverfish discovered in Earth's driest desert" (Press release). University of Cologne. 24 March 2020.

External links

• Systematics of family
• Hogue, Charles Leonard (1993). "Silverfish". Latin American Insects and Entomology. University of California Press. p. 150. ISBN 978-0-520-07849-9.

This Zygentoma-related article is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• Zygentoma
• Insect families
• Monogeneric insect families
• Zygentoma stubs