Description of the first stygobiotic species of the atyid shrimp genus Sinodina (Decapoda, Caridea, Atyidae) from Yunnan Province, China

Sinodina Liang & Cai, 1999, a genus of atyid shrimp, is endemic to China and distributed only in the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. We describe here the thirteen species of Sinodina, and the first cave-dweller of the genus, Sinodina ashima sp. nov., collected from a limestone cave in Shilin County, Yunnan Province. This species can be distinguished from its congeners by the completely degraded pigment and eyes, the extremely long rostrum, the rostral formula and the absence of sexual dimorphism of the third and fourth pereiopods. A phylogenetic analysis based on four genes (COI, 16S, 18S, H3) shows that the new species strongly clustered with the type species of this genus, Sinodina gregoriana (Kemp, 1923), supporting the generic status of this new species.