A recent study on the freshwater planarian fauna of Corsica and Sardinia established that the formerly presumed single species Dugesia benazzii subsumed a complex of species. In that study, a thorough integrative taxonomic approach, combining molecular, morphological, and karyological data, uncovered the presence of two new endemic species. For the present study, additional samplings were conducted on Corsica, covering several new localities. The data obtained were added to our previous datasets, which included information on specimens collected from both islands. By taking a similar integrative approach to the prior study, we here describe another new endemic species from Corsica, Dugesia xeropotamica. Although our results support the separate status of this new species, it also turned out that the evolutionary relationships among species of the Corso-Sardinian clade remain unclear, because the relationships are not well resolved. Additionally, we corroborate the presence of Dugesia mariae on the Tyrrhenian islets of Montecristo and Molara, representing new records for this group of Dugesia species in the region of the Tyrrhenian Sea. In all, our findings indicate that the evolutionary and biogeographical history of Dugesia species in this region of the Western Mediterranean is more intricate than previously thought.

中文翻译：

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对西地中海盆地第勒尼安海岛屿上的淡水涡虫的进化和生物地理学的新见解，以及对科西嘉岛新特有物种（扁形动物：Tricladida：Dugesia）的综合描述


最近对科西嘉岛和撒丁岛淡水涡虫动物群的一项研究表明，以前假定的单一物种 Dugesia benazzii 包含了一个物种复合体。在这项研究中，彻底的综合分类学方法结合了分子、形态学和核学数据，发现了两种新的特有物种的存在。在本研究中，在科西嘉岛进行了额外的采样，覆盖了几个新的地点。获得的数据已添加到我们之前的数据集中，其中包括从两个岛屿收集的标本信息。通过采用与先前研究类似的综合方法，我们在这里描述了科西嘉岛的另一种新特有物种，Dugesia xeropotamica。尽管我们的结果支持这个新物种的独立地位，但事实证明，科索-撒丁岛分支物种之间的进化关系仍不清楚，因为这些关系尚未得到很好的解决。此外，我们证实了第勒尼安岛的蒙特克里斯托岛和莫拉拉岛存在 Dugesia mariae，这代表了第勒尼安海地区这组 Dugesia 物种的新记录。总而言之，我们的研究结果表明，西地中海这一地区的 Dugesia 物种的进化和生物地理历史比之前想象的更加复杂。