Pseudopoda Jäger, 2000

Genus Pseudopoda Jäger, 2000 View in CoL

Type species.

Sarotes promptus O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1885 , from Murree ( Pakistan) and Himachal Pradesh ( India).

Diagnosis.

See Zhang et al. (2023 a) and Wu et al. (2024).

Distribution.

Its distribution range extends west to Murree in Pakistan (approximately 73 ° E), east to the Ryukyu Islands in Japan (approximately 128 ° E), south to Kaeng Krachan National Park in Phetchaburi Province, Thailand (approximately 13 ° N), and north to Taibaishan National Forest Park in Shaanxi Province, China (approximately 34 ° N). Also can refer to MAP 1 in Zhang et al. (2023 a).

Comments.

Up to now, a total of nine Pseudopoda species groups have been proposed, and 67 species were clearly assigned. Among them, the daliensis - group (five species), signata - group (seven species), and interposita - group (two species) were established based on both molecular and morphological characteristics by Zhang et al. (2017, 2019) and Li et al. (2019), respectively. The remaining six were all established by Jäger (2001) based on genitalic morphological characters to accommodate 42 species: the diversipunctata - group (three species), latembola - group (seven species), martensi - group (13 species), parvipunctata - group (eight species), prompta - group (nine species), and schwendingeri - group (two species). After the establishment of these species groups, at least 11 species were clearly assigned to these groups in the original papers: four were allocated to the diversipunctata group by Jäger et al. (2006) and Yang et al. (2022), four were allocated to the martensi group by Jäger (2008), Zhang et al. (2013 b), and Caleb et al. (2018), two were allocated to the prompta group by Jäger (2008) and Zhang et al. (2023 a), and one was allocated to the schwendingeri group by Jäger et al. (2015).

It is evident that the number of species clearly assigned to these species groups accounts for about a quarter of the total species in the genus. In contrast, the remaining nearly 200 species, including a large number of recently described species, cannot be allocated ( Jiang et al. 2018; Deng et al. 2023; Gong et al. 2023; Zhang et al. 2023 a; Chang et al. 2024; Wen et al. 2024; Wu et al. 2024). Sorting Pseudopoda species into species groups is highly challenging. The possible reasons for this have been discussed in detail in Zhang et al. (2023 a) and will not be repeated here.

We have also attempted to group the six species treated in this paper based on both morphological and molecular data but were unable to do so. While P. ying sp. nov. can be clearly assigned to the daliensis group (as it exhibits typical features of the daliensis group and resembles P. sicyoidea Zhang, Jäger & Liu, 2017 , the core species of this group, and the grouping is also supported by molecular data), the remaining five species cannot be assigned to any of the existing nine species groups. Furthermore, reviewing the species groups of the genus is not within the scope of this work. Therefore, we refrain from assigning species (except P. ying sp. nov.) to species groups in the current paper.