Observation of a suctorian ciliate Ephelota coronata on the calanoid copepod Pontella spinipes in the southeastern Arabi
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Observation of a suctorian ciliate Ephelota coronata on the calanoid copepod Pontella spinipes in the southeastern Arabian Sea Aishwarya Purushothaman 1
&
Igor Dovgal 2 & Sanu V. Francis 1
&
K. B. Padmakumar 1
Received: 14 May 2020 / Accepted: 8 August 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract This is the first report of an epibiotic suctorian ciliate Ephelota coronata on a calanoid copepod Pontella spinipes collected during the summer monsoon season in open ocean waters off Thiruvananthapuram, Southeastern Arabian Sea. The ciliate species is redescribed based on original data. The nomenclature history and an improved diagnoses both of Ephelota coronata and of genus Ephelota are presented. Information on the species distribution and the host species is deduced and refined from what is known from other species of Ephelota. E. coronata differs in body shape which is in form of a short rounded cylinder with the presence of a smooth, expanded upward stalk without folds and striae and a distribution of tentacles only at the apical surface of the cell body. Keywords Epibiosis . Suctorian ciliate . Ephelota coronata . Copepod host . Southeastern Arabian Sea
1 Introduction Adhesion of organisms to the exoskeleton of zooplanktonic and zoobenthic organisms is a common phenomenon in the marine and freshwater environments. Epibiotic ciliate protozoans are widely present on various host taxa (Santhakumari and Gopalan 1980; Morado and Small 1995; FernandezLeborans and Tato-Porto, 2000a, b; Dovgal et al. 2008; Fernandez-Leborans 2009; Ingole et al. 2010; Chatterjee et al. 2013, 2019). The epibiotic environment as one of the five major environments in the aquatic ecosystem and animal surfaces, especially the chitinous exoskeleton of crustaceans appear to be nutrient rich surfaces that allow the organisms to attach, grow and further extensively develop (Sieburth (1975). Copepods are the most abundant metazoan in the sea and have a key position in the marine food web. They act as a link between the primary producers and organisms at higher trophic levels (Fields et al. 2015). The planktonic copepods are * K. B. Padmakumar [email protected] 1
Department of Marine Biology, Microbiology & Biochemistry, School of Marine Sciences, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kochi, Kerala 16, India
2
A.O. Kovalevsky Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas, Sevastopol, Russia
common hosts (basibionts) to a large variety of ciliates (epibionts) which live on the host body surface (Sewell 1951; Hiromi et al. 1985; Ho and Perkins 1985; Santhakumari 1985; Ohtsuka et al. 2004). The protozoan epibionts on crustaceans are predominantly representatives of Suctorea, Hymenostomatia, Peritrichia, Chonotrichia, Apostomatia and Spirotrichia (FernandezLeborans and Tato-Porto, 2000a, b; Lynn 2008; FernandezLeborans 2009, Dovgal 2013; Padmakumar et al. 2015; Chatterjee et al., 2013, 2019). Among these, the representatives of class Suctorea and subclass Peritrichia are the most widely reported epibionts of marine co
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