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 of southern China. The new taxon, the first cirolanid isopod ever described from subterranean waters in China, is characterised by possessing five free pleonites, the fourth not overlapping the fifth, by a narrow frontal lamina, by the pereiopods 1 to 3 being haptorial, by the endopodites of pleonites bifid, and by the setation of exopodite of pleopods 1 to 5 and of endopods 1 and 2. It has no close relatives among the stygobiotic taxa reported from the Far East and is probably related to some genera from the Mediterranean Basin and the western side of the Atlantic, thus pointing to a Tethyan ancestry.