A New Species of Lepeophtheirus (Copepoda; Caligidae) Parasitic on Three Kelpfish Species (Clinidae) from the Southern California Coast

Abstract

A new copepod species, Lepeophtheirus schaadti n. sp., is established based on female and male specimens obtained from the Giant Kelpfish, Heterostichus rostratus Gi¬ rard, 1854, and Striped Kelpfish, Gibbonsia metzi Hubbs, 1927, captured at Inner Cabrillo Beach in southern California, U.S.A. In addition, comparisons with copepod specimens identified by Wilson (1935) as L. parviventris Wilson, 1905 from the Spotted Kelpfish, Gibbonsia elegans (Cooper, 1864), in Newport Bay, California, revealed they are conspecific with L. schaadti n. sp. The new species differs from its congeners by a combination of characters that include: female with a genital complex that is more than half the length of the cephalothoracic shield and with posterolateral lobes, an abdomen that is composed of one somite and is less than one-quarter the length of the genital complex, a maxillulary dentiform process bearing a thin ridge on the inner tine and lacking a basal knob, no myxal process on the maxilliped, apically rounded tines on the sternal furca, the spine on the first exopodal segment of leg 3 inserted distally on the basal swelling, a 3-segmented leg 4 exopod, and a broad inner lobe of leg 5 that does not extend beyond the posterior margin of the genital complex; and male with three accessory claws on the antennal endopod and no myxal process on the maxilliped. L. schaadti n. sp. represents the first account of an ectoparasitic species from the Striped Kelpfish and Spotted Kelpfish, as well as the fourth ectoparasitic species reported from the Giant Kelpfish.Members of the copepod family Caligidae Burmeister, 1835, commonly known as sea lice, are predominantly external parasites of marine fishes (Dojiri and Ho 2013). Among the 30 valid caligid genera, Lepeophtheirus von Nordmann, 1832 is one of the more speciose genera, with 121 valid species and 2 recognized subspecies (Boxshall and Walter 2016). Lepeophtheirus parasitizes marine teleosts worldwide, but is more diverse in temperate latitudes (Kabata 1979). One species, Lepeophtheirus salmonis (Kroyer, 1837) sensu lato, is the most pathogenic ectoparasite on farmed salmonids in the northern hemisphere (Johnson et al. 2004;Costello 2006). Presently, 17 species of Lepeophtheirus have been reported from 16 fish families along the California coast, from San Francisco Bay in the north to La Jolla in the south of the state (Table 1). Recent samples of Giant Kelpfish ( Heterostichus rostratus Girard, 1854) and Striped Kelpfish ( Gibbonsia metzi Hubbs, 1927) (Clinidae Swainson, 1839) collected within the Port of Los Angeles during Cabrillo Marine Aquarium's Inner Cabrillo Beach Survey (ICBS) were infected with an unidentified species of Lepeophtheirus. The ICBS is a long-term, tri-annual survey designed to monitor the abundance and diversity of the invertebrates and

Time for speciation and niche conservatism explain the latitudinal diversity gradient in clupeiform fishes

“…Although range‐based estimates may not be as precise as experimentally derived niche estimates, they are useful proxies for interspecific comparisons and macroevolutionary studies of climate niche evolution (Economo et al, 2019; McNyset, 2005; Rabosky et al, 2018). We collected species range data from the literature (Borsa et al, 2004; Castro‐Aguirre et al, 2002; Hata et al, 2020a,b; Kimura et al, 2009; Loeb & Alcantara, 2013), FishNet2 (http://www.fishnet2.net) occurrence records and compiled Ocean Biogeographic Information System (http://www.iobis.org; Grassle, 2000) and Global Biodiversity Information Facility (http://www.gbif.org; GBIF.org, 2017) occurrence records accessed via AquaMaps (Kaschner et al, 2016). We checked for congruence in species range estimates from different sources and eliminated occurrences if we deemed them erroneous.…”

“…Although range-based estimates may not be as precise as experimentally derived niche estimates, they are useful proxies for interspecific comparisons and macroevolutionary studies of climate niche evolution (Economo et al, 2019;McNyset, 2005;Rabosky et al, 2018). We collected species range data from the literature (Borsa et al, 2004;Castro-Aguirre et al, 2002;Hata et al, 2020a,b;Kimura et al, 2009;Loeb & Alcantara, 2013), FishNet2 (www.fishn et2.net) occurrence records and compiled Ocean Biogeographic Information System (www.…”

Persistent companionships: The parasitic copepod community of the dolphinfish Coryphaena hippurus on the Ecuadorian coast

“…To our knowledge, there are no previous records of Lepeophtheirus on dolphinfish (see Williams & Bunkley‐Williams, 2010), so this could be the first host record of this genus on C. hippurus . Currently, there are six species of this chiefly temperate‐water genus (Passarelli & Tang, 2017) known from the TEP: L. alvaroi Suárez‐Morales & Gasca 2012; L. clarionensis Shiino , 1959; L. dissimulatus Wilson C.B. 1905; L. parvus Wilson C.B.…”

Integrative taxonomy of Pseudolepeophtheirus longicauda (Crustacea: Copepoda: Caligidae) parasitic on Platichthys stellatus (Actinopterygii: Pleuronectidae)

“…Although Dojiri and Ho [6] synonymized Pseudolepeophtheirus longicauda (now Lepeophtheirus longicauda) with Lepeophtheirus parvicruris, we concluded these are different species. Among 126 valid species and two recognized subspecies in Lepeophtheirus, including two species formerly placed in Pseudolepeophtheirus ( [4,48,49], this study), L. longicauda shares the following combination of characters with L. parvicruris and three other species (L. longiventralis Yü & Wu, 1932; L. marcepes C.B. Wilson, 1944;and L. schmidti (formerly Pseudolepeophtheirus schmidti)): 1) the abdomen is about as long as, or longer than, the genital complex (Kabata's [11] "long abdomen"); 2) CL is far shorter than GL+AL, with CL/(GL+AL) around 0.5; and 3) the number of exopodal segments in leg 4 is 2 or less [6,8,9,11,50,51].…”