Genomic species delimitation reveals sympatry in Tasmanian egg-laying velvet worms (Onychophora : Peripatopsidae : Ooperipatellus Ruhberg, 1985)

Ooperipatellus Ruhberg, 1985 is a genus of egg-laying Onychophoran (velvet worm) known from Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand). To date, velvet worm systematics and taxonomy has largely utilized either morphological, single locus molecular data, or a combination of the two. Here, focusing on the Australian Ooperipatellus, we generate a large dataset via hybrid target enrichment of ultraconserved elements (UCEs) and for the first time in Onychophora, demonstrate the utility of such data for delimiting species. Through applying machine learning-based approaches to our UCE data, we uncover several cryptic species on Lutruwita (Tasmania). This work provides an overview of Australian Ooperipatellus diversity, species distributions, and their taxonomic history. As a result of our analyses, we provide descriptions for three new species, Ooperipatellus mathinnae Lord & Giribet, sp. nov., Ooperipatellus notus Lord & Giribet, sp. nov., and Ooperipatellus cynocephalus Lord & Giribet, sp. nov., and evidence for synonymizing two currently described species: Ooperipatellus nickmayeri Oliveira & Mayer, 2017 is here considered a junior synonym of Ooperipatellus spenceri (Cockerell, 1913b), new synonymy. The apparent overlapping geographic distributions of Tasmanian species uncovered in this study do not support the assumption that all velvet worms are typically point endemics with discrete distributions as suggested for species in several other regions of the world. These results suggest that the Tasmanian biota merits greater examination to discern if similar biogeographic patterns are also seen in other taxa on this island, or if this pattern is unique to this group.