First records of enchytraeids from Arsi Mountains National Park (Ethiopia)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25674/508Keywords:
Soil fauna, potworms, Africa, highlands, shrublandAbstract
African fauna of enchytraeids (Annelida: Clitellata: Enchytraeidae) remains largely understudied (Schlaghamerský et al. 2025). Enchytraeids in Ethiopia in particular have not been investigated, with the exception of a single record of Fridericia humicola Bretscher, 1900 from Mount Gara Muleta, about 50 km from the city of Harar (Michaelsen 1903). Because Ethiopian climate is predominantly hot and arid (Beck et al. 2018), the most favorable conditions for enchytraeids occur in mountainous areas supporting subalpine vegetation, primarily moderately humid heath shrubland (Girma et al. 2018, Kidane et al. 2022). Here we present a short checklist of enchytraeid species extracted from soil collected in Arsi Mountains National Park, Ethiopia. To confirm the identification of one species, molecular analysis of the COI marker was used in addition to morphological characters, whereas the histone H3 fragment was treated as supplementary evidence.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Maxim I. Degtyarev, Margarita A. Danilova, Gezahegn Degefe, Leonid B. Rybalov
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