Taxonomic Study Of Mitridae (Gastropoda: Neogastropoda) Of China Seas

Family Mitridae belongs to Gastropoda of Mollusca. There have been nearly 500 species described in worldwide. In accordance with the collection of MBMCAS (Marine Biological Museum of Chinese Academy of Sciences in IOCAS, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao 266071), Chinese mitrid fauna should be rich, although the records from China seas are poor. Although their range is from intertidal to about 400 meters in depth, and some species can be found in the depth of 1465 meters, the species of mitridae usually distribute hi warm and shollow waters, often habit in the bottom of sand, mud and coral reef. As a important prey and predator, the species play a very important role in the natural food chains, who has a evident effect on the material l' cycle.In China, Dr. Zhongyan QI studied the family in 80's last century. Unfortunately, there is seldom systematic study on the subject. Li et al. (2003) generally summarized the study of Mitridae in China.During the last two years, I checked the Miter specimen collection of MBMCAS collected by the explorations since 50 Decade of last century, including "The comprehensive resource investigation of Chinese coast and shallow waters"(1958-1960), "China-Vietnam cooperative expedition of marine resource to Beibu Bay (Gulf of Tokin)"(1959-1962), " The resource investigation of coast and shallow waters of Shandong Province", "The comprehensive resource investigation of the islands of China", "China-Germany cooperative expeditions of marine biota to Hainan Island, China"(1990-1992), and 52 species have been found, which are mainly from East and South China Seas, of which, three forms are considered as new species, i. e., Ziba aglaii sp. nov.., Neocancilla daidaleos sp. nov., and Mitra holkosaa sp. nov.All the specimens studied in this paper were deposited in MBMCAS.