On Opening a Box of Worms (Oligochaeta, Megascolecidae)- Historical Earthworm Specimens Transferred to Tokyo from the Saito Ho-on Kai Museum of Natural History in Sendai

摘要

A box discovered at the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo held historical specimens from Saito Ho-on Kai Museum dating from 1920-1930s coincident with author Dr. Shinkishi Hatai's tenure and likely identified by him or his assistant, Mr. Shinryo Ohfuchi. A syn-type is newly recognized for Amynthas maculosus (Hatai, 1930) comb, nov., no others could be unequivocally proven so. However, several are candidates for neotypification under current ICZN (1999) rules as a first step to resolving zoological complexities of parthenogenesis and of taxo-nomic confusion persisting for >112 years. Neotypes are explicitly designated herein for Amynthas vittatus (Goto and Hatai, 1898), Duplodicodrilus acinctus (Goto and Hatai, 1899) new combination (synonym yezoensis Kobayashi, 1938), and for topotypes of Amynthas'? yunoshimensis (Hatai, 1930) itself a probable synonym of Metaphire hilgendorfi (Michaelsen, 1892), and of M. yamadai (Hatai, 1930) that is retained separately from M. soulensis (Kobayashi, 1938). Metaphire soulensis synonyms {shinkeiensis Kobayashi, 1938 and aokii Ishizuka, 1999) are re-stated. Details are presented of two recently unearthed syntypes at the University of Tokyo Museum (UMUTZ), viz. Metaphire communissima (Goto and Hatai, 1899) herein designated the lectotype, and Amynthas levis (Goto and Hatai, 1899) itself a probable synonym of A. tokioensis (Beddard, 1892). Neotypification is flagged both of Amynthas micronarius (Goto and Hatai, 1898), and of Amynthas carno-sus (Goto and Hatai, 1899) that is now separated from other synonyms of the A. corticis (Kinberg, 1867) species-complex. Metaphire hilgendorfi (Michaelsen, 1892) is confirmed in its proper genus based on material labelled "Ph. glandularis." Unfortunately, mtDNA COI gene barcoding failed to provide conclusive results on these older, formol-fixed samples.