Nerocila species (Crustacea, Isopoda, Cymothoidae) from Indian marine fishes
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Nerocila species (Crustacea, Isopoda, Cymothoidae) from Indian marine fishes Jean-Paul Trilles & Ganapathy Rameshkumar & Samuthirapandian Ravichandran
Received: 18 September 2012 / Accepted: 17 December 2012 / Published online: 17 January 2013 # The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Eleven Nerocila species are recorded from 22 marine fishes belonging to 15 families. Three, Nerocila arres, Nerocila depressa, and Nerocila loveni, are new for the Indian fauna. N. arres and Nerocila sigani, previously synonymized, are redescribed and their individuality is restored. Nerocila exocoeti, until now inadequately identified, is described and distinctly characterized. A neotype is designated. New hosts were identified for N. depressa, N. loveni, Nerocila phaiopleura, Nerocila serra, and Nerocila sundaica. Host–parasite relationships were considered. The parasitologic indexes were calculated. The site of attachment of the parasites on their hosts was also observed. A checklist of the nominal Nerocila species until now reported from Indian marine fishes was compiled.
Introduction Many fish species are parasitized by Cymothoid isopods. They are found from various parts of the fish, on the skin, on the fins, in the buccal or branchial cavities, sometimes in a pouch. Some are highly host specific, even in the manca stage (Trilles 1964; Tsai et al. 1999). However, several species show a poor host specificity and the mancae may attach and feed on optional intermediate hosts belonging to different fish families (Sarusic Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00436-012-3263-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. J.-P. Trilles UMR 5119 (CNRS-UM2- IRD-UM1-IFREMER), Equipe Adaptation Ecophysiologique et Ontogenèse, Université Montpellier 2, CC. 092, Place E. Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier Cedex 05, France G. Rameshkumar (*) : S. Ravichandran Centre of Advanced Study in Marine Biology, Faculty of Marine Sciences, Annamalai University, Parangipettai 608 502, Tamil Nadu, India e-mail: [email protected]
1999) and sometimes even on several other organisms (Trilles and Öktener 2004; Wunderlich et al. 2011). Nerocila is a large genus of the family Cymothoidae including at least 65 species living attached on the skin or on the fins of fishes. As already reported by Trilles (1972, 1979), Williams and Williams (1980, 1981), and Bruce (1987a, b), several species are morphologically highly variable and their identification is often difficult. The variability was particularly studied in Nerocila armata and Nerocila orbignyi (Monod 1931), Nerocila excisa (Trilles 1972), Nerocila sundaica (Bowman 1978), Nerocila acuminata (Brusca 1981), Nerocila arres, and Nerocila kisra (Bowman and Tareen 1983), and N. orbignyi, Nerocila monodi, and Nerocila phaiopleura (Bruce 1987a). Until now few studies were performed on parasites collected from Indian marine fishes (Pillai 1954, 1964; Ravichandran et al. 2010; Ra
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