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Updated: Jan 28, 2026

Laser Microdissection for Species-Agnostic Single-Tissue Applications
Published on: March 31, 2022
A new species of Moina Baird, 1850 (Cladocera: Moinidae) from Thailand
Miguel Alonso1, Anna N Neretina, La-Orsri Sanoamuang
1Ecology Section, Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Biology, University of Barcelona, Avda. Diagonal 643, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.. malonso@ub.edu.
Abstract:
A new species of Moina Baird, 1850 (Cladocera: Moinidae) is described based on material collected from Thailand (South-East Asia). In tropical Asia, Moina siamensis sp. nov. could be confused easily with M. weismanni Ishikawa, 1896, because of morphological similarities in parthenogenetic females and males of both species. The outstanding difference between these two taxa concerns the structure of the ephippium in gamogenetic females, which is highly visible under light and scanning electron microscopes. The mature ephippium of M. weismanni is strongly tuberous, with distinct borders between cells, whereas the ephippium of M. siamensis sp. nov. is significantly less tuberous, with prominent longitudinal lines in its central region. Since gamogenetic females only appear sporadically in moinid populations, distribution ranges of M. siamensis sp. nov., M. weismanni and sibling taxa must be clarified precisely using genetic markers in the future. Preliminary investigations of the ephippium structure may be useful for estimating the differences between populations, thus revealing much diversity within Moinidae.
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