A new species of Cristaria Schumacher, 1817 (Bivalvia, Unionidae) from Sichuan, China

By

Dai, Yu-Ting
Chen, Zhongguang
Chen, Hu
Niu, Bo-Wen
Jia, Ding-Chao
Xie, Tian-Xiang
Xiong, Liu-Feng
Wu, Xiaoping
Peng, Mo

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2026-1-8

Original Publication

Zoosystematics and evolution

Volume

102

Series / Issue

Issue: 1

Pages

87--95

Subjects

freshwater mussel , Morphology , Phylogeny , taxonomy , upper Yangtze River Basin

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia Pensoft

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/zse.102.173182

 

Abstract

<br> The species diversity of freshwater mussels in the upper Yangtze River has been seriously underestimated, and human-induced disturbances have severely threatened the survival of local bivalve species. In this study, we describe a new freshwater mussel species,<br> Cristaria wangyucheni<br> Z.-G. Chen &amp; Y.-T. Dai,<br> sp. nov.<br> , from the Jialing River Basin in the upper Yangtze River, Sichuan, China, based on comparative morphology and molecular phylogeny. Phylogenetic analyses of<br> COI<br> and<br> 28S<br> rRNA gene fragments revealed that<br> C. wangyucheni<br> sp. nov.<br> is a sister to the other species of<br> Cristaria<br> . The pairwise uncorrected<br> COI p<br> -distance analysis demonstrated genetic distances ranging from 10.10% (between this species and<br> C. truncata<br> ) to 13.17% (between this species and<br> C.<br> “<br> beirensis<br> ”). Morphologically,<br> C. wangyucheni<br> sp. nov.<br> can be distinguished from its congeners by its medium-sized shell, which ranges from an elongated triangle to an irregular rectangle. This discovery broadens our understanding of interspecific shell morphological variation within the genus<br> Cristaria<br> .<br>