Xiao Chen Hou, Liu Lin‡, Mei Mei Li‡, Hui Jiang‡, Shi HaiTao‡Corresponding author: Xiao Chen Hou ( 2357351973@qq.com ) Corresponding author: Shi HaiTao ( haitao-shi@263.net ) © Xiao Chen Hou, Liu Lin, Mei Mei Li, Hui Jiang, Shi HaiTao. This is an open access preprint distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Hou XC, Lin L, Li MM, Jiang H, HaiTao S (2022) A new species of the genus Pelodiscus (Testudines, Trionychia) from Jiangxi China. ARPHA Preprints. https://doi.org/10.3897/arphapreprints.e84618 |  |
A new species of softshell turtle (Pelodiscus jiangxiensis sp. nov.) is described based on five specimens from Jiangxi, China. Phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial sequences indicated that the new species is the sister lineage to a Pelodiscus clade that includes two currently recognized species, namely P. axenaria (Zhou, Zhang & Fang, 1991) from Hunan and P. huangshanensis Gong et al. 2021 from Anhui. Morphologically, the new species is most similar to P. axenaria but can be distinguished by its plain, yellowish white plastron, the absence of the single dark gray central figure, and a distinct carapace pattern. The description of this species increases the number of recognized Pelodiscus species to seven, of which six are distributed in China and four are endemic.