Two members of the Russian Far East Malacological Society published an important contribution to the chiton fauna of China, little-known until that: Dr. Zhang Junlong (Institute of Oceanology CAS, Qingdao) and Dr. Boris I. Sirenko (Zoological Institute RAS, St. Petersburg). Their paper deals with the chiton fauna of Hainan Island and was published in Zootaxa https://biotaxa.org/Zootaxa/article/view/zootaxa.4564.1.1.

Based on their cooperative study on samples from this expedition and historical collections, they comprehensively reported the fauna of the living chitons from this area for the first time.The present results showed that a total of 30 species belonging to 18 genera in seven families were recognized in the vicinity of Hainan Island by careful examination of valves, radulae, girdles and other morphological characters. Six species were reported for the first time from this area, i.e., Rhyssoplax venusta, Lucilina lamellosa, L. tenuicostata, L. tilbrooki, Onithochiton stracki and Acanthochitona intermedia. Several species names were also corrected: Craspedochiton laqueatus previously reported from there was re-identified as Acanthochitona lanae; Notoplax (Notoplax) sp. and Notoplax (Notoplax) formosa were both re-identified as Acanthochitona britayevi; Notoplax doederleini was re-identified as Acathochitona achates. In additions, Callochiton sp. and Plaxiphora sp. were identified as Callochiton multidentatus and Plaxiphora bucklandnicksi, respectively. Acanthochiton sp. from Xisha Islands was identified as A. intermedia. Acanthochitona rubrolineata and Acanthochitona bednalli were excluded from distribution to the South China Sea (http://english.qdio.cas.cn/Research2016/Research_Progress2016/QSDM2016/201904/t20190418_208565.html).

Congratulations to our colleagues with important contribution to malacology!

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