First record of epibiotic parasitic dinoflagellate Ellobiopsis chattoni on copepod Bestiolina similis from northeastern
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First record of epibiotic parasitic dinoflagellate Ellobiopsis chattoni on copepod Bestiolina similis from northeastern Arabian Sea Aishwarya Purushothaman 1 & Lathika Cicily Thomas 1
&
K. B. Padmakumar 1
Received: 29 October 2019 / Accepted: 12 February 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Parasitic dinoflagellate Ellobiopsis chattoni was observed on the body surface of copepod Bestiolina similis collected from northeastern Arabian Sea during early spring intermonsoon. Each host was infested with a single parasite, with females being more severely affected. The study was first of its kind from northeastern Arabian Sea. With the present report, the biogeographic boundary of this species can be extended to the northeastern Arabian Sea. Keywords Epibiosis . Parasitic dinoflagellate . Ellobiopsis chattoni . Copepod . Bestiolina similis . Northeastern Arabian Sea
1 Introduction Copepods are the most abundant metazoans in the sea and play an important role as the key trophic link in pelagic food webs (Humes 1994). In marine environment of limited space, body surface (exoskeleton) of most crustaceans, including copepods serves as a convenient habitat for a variety of organisms such as bacteria, microalgae and protozoans (Theodorides 1989; Carman and Dobbs 1997; FernandezLeborans and Tato-Porto 2000a, b; Walkusz and Rolbiecki 2007; Totti et al. 2011). Such a spatially close association between two or more living organisms (Harder 2009) in which single host (basibiont) supports one or more facultative colonizers (epibionts) is recognized as epibiosis (Wahl and Mark 1999). Epibiosis adversely affects basibionts by decreasing fecundity, perturbation of locomotion (Henebry and Ridgeway 1979), increased susceptibility to predation (Evans et al. 1979; Willey et al. 1990; Wahl et al. 1997), lesions and diseases, thereby increasing the energy demands and faster sinking rate (Sawyer and McLean 1978; Turner et al. 1979; Nagasawa 1987). However, epibionts are benefitted by their transfer to food and oxygen rich areas and decreased predation due to attachment to moving bodies (Henebry and Ridgeway 1979; Kankaala and Eloranta
* K. B. Padmakumar [email protected] 1
Department of Marine Biology, Microbiology & Biochemistry, School of Marine Sciences, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kochi-16, Kerala, India
1987). Epibiosis mainly depend on the host species, location and season. It also depends on the host behavior such as its preference to places with food resource and its ability to avoid environmental conditions or fatal events like grazing. The family Ellobiopsidae is a heterogeneous group of dinoflagellate parasites/ epibionts found on various planktonic crustaceans. Only limited studies have been devoted to Ellobiopsid parasites on crustaceans, which has been associated with dinoflagellates, although their systematic position remains uncertain (Galt and Whisler 1970; Theodorides 1989; Shields 1994; Cavalier-Smith 2003). The genus Ellobiopsis is a parasite of copepods and was first described in 1910 (Ca
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