Catailana whitteni, a new genus and species of stygobiotic cirolanid from a cave in Guangxi, China (Custacea: Isopoda:Cirolanidae).

Catailana whitteni, a new genus and species of cirolanid isopod is described from a cave in the karsts ofsouthern China. The new taxon, the first cirolanid isopod ever described from subterranean waters in China, ischaracterised by possessing five free pleonites, the fourth not overlapping the fifth, by a narrow frontal lamina, bythe pereiopods 1 to 3 being haptorial, by the endopodites of pleonites bifid, and by the setation of exopodite ofpleopods 1 to 5 and of endopods 1 and 2. It has no close relatives among the stygobiotic taxa reported from the FarEast and is probably related to some genera from the Mediterranean Basin and the western side of the Atlantic, thuspointing to a Tethyan ancestry.