Aglajidae sp.10

Overview

An unidentified species within the family Aglajidae. The animal has a black body finely speckled with white dots, closely resembling the white-dotted morph of Nakamigawaia nakanoae from Taiwan, but mitochondrial COI clearly places it in a different lineage.

Molecular evidence

At COI, the BLAST top hits are Philinopsis depicta (84% identity), Chelidonura sandrana, Mariaglaja tsurugensis, Aglaja felis, and Navanax gemmatus, all clustering at 82-84% identity. The query is approximately equidistant from every named Aglajidae genus (16-18% divergence), placing it unambiguously within Aglajidae but not matching any known species.

Distinction from Nakamigawaia nakanoae

The external appearance closely matches the white-dotted morph of N. nakanoae from Taiwan, but pairwise COI distance to the N. nakanoae paratypes (ZMBN 116777 / 116778) is 22% (77.8-78.2% identity), well beyond the genus boundary within Aglajidae. The shape of the caudal end also appears to differ from N. nakanoae. The black-body / fine-white-spots colour pattern occurs convergently in several Aglajidae genera, so external appearance alone cannot resolve the genus.

Remarks

Generic identification in Aglajidae requires examination of the gizzard plates and internal shell in addition to external colouration. Definitive placement of the present specimen awaits dissection of these structures, combined with additional markers (16S, H3) in a concatenated phylogeny. The species is retained as Aglajidae sp.10 in the meantime.

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