UNTANGLING CONFUSION BETWEEN EUBRANCHIPUS-VERNALIS AND EUBRANCHIPUS NEGLECTUS (BRANCHIOPODA, ANOSTRACA)

Despite illustrations in Garman (1926) clearly showing the different a ntennal appendages of Eubranchipus vernalis and Eubranchipus neglectus , Creaser (1930) published erroneous drawings of the antennal appendag es of these two species that led to more than 65 years of taxonomic co nfusion between them. We untangle this confusion, and show that these species have nonoverlapping areas of occurrence with E. vernalis to th e east and E. neglectus to the west of the Appalachian Mountains. In a ddition, we present evidence supporting the use of resting-egg (cyst) morphology in studying evolutionary relationships among anostracan spe cies. An important part of this usefulness is due to the independence of cyst morphology from sexual selection. Since the primary taxonomic characters of anostracans are all strongly influenced by sexual select ion, cyst morphology can supply a reasonably independent set of charac ters for testing hypotheses of species relationships.