Maindroniidae is a very small family of silverfish, basal

insect Insects (from Latin ') are Hexapoda, hexapod invertebrates of the class (biology), class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (Insect morphology#Head, head, ...

s belonging to the order

Zygentoma Zygentoma are an order in the class Insecta, and consist of about 550 known species. The Zygentoma include the so-called silverfish or fishmoths, and the firebrats. A conspicuous feature of the order are the three long caudal filaments. The t ...

. It contains just a single genus, ''Maindronia'', and a handful of species. Four species of these insects are found in some of the driest deserts on Earth: in

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

, the

Arabian Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula (, , or , , ) or Arabia, is a peninsula in West Asia, situated north-east of Africa on the Arabian plate. At , comparable in size to India, the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world. Geographically, the ...

, and the

Atacama Desert The Atacama Desert () is a desert plateau located on the Pacific Ocean, Pacific coast of South America, in the north of Chile. Stretching over a strip of land west of the Andes Mountains, it covers an area of , which increases to if the barre ...

on the west coast of

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

. The distribution of these closely related species suggests that ''Maindronia'' is a

Gondwana Gondwana ( ; ) was a large landmass, sometimes referred to as a supercontinent. The remnants of Gondwana make up around two-thirds of today's continental area, including South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia (continent), Australia, Zea ...

n relict group. A new species in this family was recently discovered in Hormozgan province,

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

. ''Maindronia'' currently comprises four described species: * ''Maindronia bashagardensis'' Smith & Molero-Baltanás, 2020 – Iran * ''Maindronia beieri'' Schremmer, 1964 – Sudan * ''Maindronia mascatensis'' Bouvier, 1897 – Oman and UAE * ''Maindronia neotropicalis'' Bouvier, 1897 – Peru and Chile Recent findings from a

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical dat ...

study using the

Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I Cytochrome c oxidase I (COX1) also known as mitochondrially encoded cytochrome c oxidase I (MT-CO1) is a protein that is encoded by the ''MT-CO1'' gene in eukaryotes. The gene is also called ''COX1'', ''CO1'', or ''COI''. Cytochrome c oxidase ...

and the 18S genes showed that ''Maindronia neotropicalis'', inhabiting the Chilean Atacama desert, is in fact an assemblage of five genetic lineages that diverged from a

common ancestor Common descent is a concept in evolutionary biology applicable when one species is the ancestor of two or more species later in time. According to modern evolutionary biology, all living beings could be descendants of a unique ancestor commonl ...

around 15 million years ago. All of these five lineages are likely well-separated species, and they await formal description.

References

External links

Systematics of family
* Zygentoma Insect families Monogeneric insect families {{Thysanura-stub