New species and records of microturbellarians from coastal rock pools of Jamaica, West Indies

A system of small erosional pools formed on the coastal rocks of the Jamaican north shore is home to many invertebrate species. The fauna of the pools comprises a rarely reported mixture of species from both marine and freshwater habitats. Turbellarians identified include six species of which two, belonging to the genus Gieysztoria, are new. One species, Gyratrix hermaphroditus, is a habitat generalist and occurs in a number of pools with markedly different physical and morphological characteristics. The other five species have a more restricted distribution and appear to be habitat specialists within the rock pool system. Both temperature and salinity strongly affect the local distribution of microturbellarians. The total number of brackish and freshwater species of microturbellarians reported from the Caribbean islands thus increases to nine, a very low number by comparison to any other geo,geographical area, even a single lake.