Lumbricidae [SEP] parent taxon
Lumbricidae
The Lumbricidae are a family of earthworms which includes most of the earthworm species well-known to Europeans. About 33 lumbricid species have become naturalized around the world, but the bulk of the species are in the Holarctic region: from Canada (e.g. "Bimastos lawrenceae" on Vancouver Island) and the United States (e.g. "Eisenoides carolinensis", "Eisenoides lonnbergi" and most "Bimastos" spp.) and throughout Eurasia to Japan (e.g. "Eisenia japonica", "E. koreana" and "Helodrilus hachiojii
Taxon in disguise
In bacteriology, a taxon in disguise is a species, genus or higher unit of biological classification whose evolutionary history reveals has evolved from another unit of similar or lower rank, making the parent unit paraphyletic. This happens when rapid evolution makes a new species appear radically different from the ancestral group, so that it is not (initially) recognised as belonging to the parent phylogenetic group, leaving the latter an evolutionary grade.
While the term is from bacteriology, parallel examples are found throughout the tree of