Congruence between male upper lip morphology and molecular phylogeny in Parapolycope (Ostracoda), with two new species from Korea

The ostracod genera Parapolycope Klie, 1939 and Kliecope Tanaka, Tsukagoshi & Karanovic, 2014 have a sexually dimorphic upper lip, and males use their lip during courtship. Here we study the male upper lip of 14 species in order to find homologous structures. For this purpose, the lip is divided into six homologous parts, determined by their relative position on the lip and the lip's position in relation to other body parts. We found that the distal part ('c') is the most variable across taxa, probably due to high sexual selection. Six characters of the male upper lip are used in our cladistic analysis, along with another 12, in order to study phylogenetic relationships between Parapolycope species from East Asia. In addition, 18S rRNA is used to reconstruct molecular phylogeny and test the congruence between morphological and molecular data. The recovered topology on all obtained trees is almost identical, emphasising the importance of the male upper lip morphology in interpreting phylogenetic relationships in this peculiar ostracod group. Parapolycope viriosa, sp. nov. and P. widoensis, sp. nov. from marine interstitial habitats in South Korea are described here. To aid further identification of the 12 East Asian Parapolycope species we provide a taxonomic key.