The paranthurid isopod crustacean Paranthura nigropunctata (Lucas, 1846): first record from the Atlantic coast of Morocc
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The paranthurid isopod crustacean Paranthura nigropunctata (Lucas, 1846): first record from the Atlantic coast of Morocco BELATTMANIA Zahira1, CHAOUTI Abdellatif1, REANI Abdeltif1, MACHADO Margarida2, ENGELEN Aschwin H2, SERRÃO Ester A2, SABOUR Brahim1* 1 Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, Chouaib Doukkali University, El Jadida 24000, Morocco 2 CCMAR–Centre of Marine Sciences, University of Algarve, Gambelas, Faro 8005-139, Portugal
Received 28 June 2017; accepted 18 September 2017 © Chinese Society for Oceanography and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract
The littoral paranthurid isopod crustacean Paranthura nigropunctata (Lucas, 1846) is recorded for the first time from the littoral of El Jadida located on the Atlantic northwest coast of Morocco. Specimens were obtained from the invasive brown seaweed Sargassum muticum and the natives Bifurcaria bifurcata and Cystoseira tamariscifolia in January 2015. This new record further confirms a significant southward distribution of P. nigropunctata and contributes to the knowledge of the biogeography of this isopod. Heretofore, the species was only known from the western and eastern Mediterranean and some Atlantic coasts. The present finding is the first of the species from Moroccan Atlantic shores, and suggests that the species may also be present in other coastal localities from Morocco and Africa. Some data on morphology, ecology and spatial distribution of the species are provided. Key words: Paranthura nigropunctata, Crustacea, new report, NE Atlantic, Morocco Citation: Belattmania Zahira, Chaouti Abdellatif, Reani Abdeltif, Machado Margarida, Engelen Aschwin H, Serrão Ester A, Sabour Brahim. 2018. The paranthurid isopod crustacean Paranthura nigropunctata (Lucas, 1846): first record from the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Acta Oceanologica Sinica, 37(10): 190–194, doi: 10.1007/s13131-018-1170-z
1 Introduction Among paranthurid isopods, Paranthura is the largest, most speciose, with 71 valid species (WoRMS, 2017), and most cosmopolitan of anthuridean genera (Poore, 2001). Little is known about the ecology and biology of paranthurids (especially the genus Paranthura), probably because they never constitute abundant populations in marine benthic ecosystems (Frutos et al., 2011). Four Paranthura species are known to occur in coastal Atlantic European waters (Frutos et al., 2011; Lavesque et al., 2013): the three native species Paranthura nigropunctata (Lucas, 1849), P. costana (Bate and Westwood, 1868), P. santiparrai (Frutos, Sorbe and Junoy, 2011), and the introduced P. japonica (Richardson, 1909) recently reported from the Arcachon Bay, SW France (Frutos et al., 2011; Lavesque et al., 2013) and Mediterranean coasts (Marchini et al., 2014, 2015; Lorenti et al., 2015; Dailianis et al., 2016; Ferrario et al., 2016; Tempesti et al., 2016). One of these paranthurid isopods, P. nigropunctata, generally inhabits a wide variety of seaweeds and seagrasses. It has also been found in sediment (Castelló and Carballo, 2001), and at depths ra
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