Echiniscus testudo

Echiniscus testudo is a cosmopolitan species of tardigrade.

Echiniscus testudo
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Tardigrada
Class:	Heterotardigrada
Order:	Echiniscoidea
Family:	Echiniscidae
Genus:	Echiniscus
Species:	E. testudo
Binomial name
Echiniscus testudo (Doyère, 1840)
Synonyms[1][2]
Emydium testudo Doyère, 1840[3] Echiniscus bellermanni Schultze, 1840[4] Echiniscus inermis Richters, 1902[5] Echiniscus trifilis Rahm, 1921 Echiniscus filamentosus mongoliensis Iharos, 1973[6]

Taxonomy

The species was described by Louis Michel François Doyère in 1840; he placed it in the genus Emydium.^[3]

G. Ramazzotti and W. Maucci classified E. filamentos mongoliensis Iharos, 1973^[6] as a synonym of E. testudo in 1983; this was followed by other tardigradologists.^[1] In 2017, Piotr Gąsiorek and colleagues restored it as a distinct taxon and elevated it to species level: E. mongoliensis.^[7]

Gąsiorek and colleagues also classified E. filamentosus Plate, 1888^[8] and E. glaber Bartoš, 1937 as junior synonyms of E. testudo.^[7]

Distribution

It is found throughout most of the Palaearctic,^[9] and has been recorded in all continents except Antarctica and Australia.^[10][11] Most reports are Holarctic.^[12] Locations where it has been recorded include: Denmark, Egypt, the Faroe Islands, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Israel, Italy, Morocco,^[9] Iberia,^[13] Mongolia,^[14] and China.^[10][15]

Doyère based his description off specimens collected in Paris.^[3] The neotype designated by Gąsiorek and colleagues was collected in Paris's Montmartre Cemetery.^[7] The type localities of the junior synonyms E. bellermanni and E. inermis are both in Germany: the former is Greifswald,^[4] and the latter is the Taunus mountains near Frankfurt.^[5]

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  Dorsal view, showing its four segmented bands