Meeting Abstract

37.7  Tuesday, Jan. 5  Morphological phylogeny of crayfish from Yucatán Peninsula, México LOPEZ-MEJIA, M.*; MEJIA-ORTIZ, L. M.; Evolutionary Biology & Population Genetics Lab. Universidad de Quintana Roo; Biospeleology & Carcinology Lab., Universidad de Quintana Roo marlopez@uqroo.mx

In order to establish the phylogenetical relationships of crayfishes species from Yucatán Peninsula, México, a morphological analysis was made. Crayfish in this peninsula are represented by subgenus Austrocambarus, and particularly Procambarus (A.) llamasi. The subtlety morphological variation inside the subgenus made this species to be supposed as the only one spread along the peninsula for many long time, with the exception of one record of P. (A.) pilosimanus. That changed with the recent description of P. (A.) maya. The new population finding, result of an exhaustive morphological analysis and field work, suggest the existant of other species still undescribed. This study involves populations of the three species of Yucatán Peninsula, Procambarus llamasi, Procambarus maya, and Procambarus pilosimanus, as well as Procambarus acanthophorus (external group) and ten more populations still unidentified. The measurment, comparison and register of a number of somathic characters, even those of ornamentation from all populations, enable the obtaining of a character list and their stages and the best parsimonian phylogenetic tree. We found that Procambarus llamasi is a very representated species in Yucatán Peninsula, however the analysis support our hypothesis of new species populations.