Molecular and morphological taxonomy of living Ammonia and related taxa (Foraminifera) and their biogeography

摘要

Globally, one of the two most common shallow-marine and estuarine foraminiferal genera is Ammonia. Over the past 50 years, the majority of workers have identified specimens in this genus as belonging to just 1-3 cosmopolitan species - A. beccarii, A. tepida and A. parkinsoniana. This has been partly because of the problems of discriminating the Ammonia species based entirely on shell morphology and partly because of a 1974 laboratory study that claimed to have shown that all morphologies were merely ecophenotypic variants of one species - a conclusion that molecular studies have proven to be unequivocally wrong. In this study we recognize, describe and figure sixty-seven living species and infraspecies of Recent Ammonia and two closely-related genera (Acarotrochus, Pseudoeponides) from around the world and summarize their ecological and biogeographic distribution.