Developmental types and a new cryptic species of Chicoreus (Gastropoda: Muricidae) from Papua New Guinea

The two Indo-West Pacific muricid gastropods Chicoreus brunneus (Link, 1807) and C. microphyllus (Lamarck, 1822), are commonly thought to develop via a non-planktotrophic larval stage, as witnessed by their paucispiral larval shell. We have found specimens morphologically ascribable to these two taxa, but with multispiral protoconchs clearly indicating planktotrophic development, and have addressed their status by comparing sequences of the DNA barcode fragment (cytochrome c oxidase I, cox1) from specimens of the two complexes with both protoconch types.

While the genetic data are not conclusive for the C. brunneus complex (although suggestive of a cryptic diversity), the specimens of the C. microphyllus complex with multispiral protoconch are clearly not conspecific with those with paucispiral protoconch, and are here described as a new taxon: C. phyrtos sp. nov.