First Report of a Species of Folliculovarium Gu & Shen, 1983 (Bucephalidae: Prosorhynchinae) from European Marine Waters, with the Description of F. mediterraneum n. sp.

Authors

Pierre Bartoli, Centre d’Océanologie de Marseille, Campus Universitaire de Luminy, Marseille
Robin M. Overstreet, University of Southern Mississippi
David I. Gibson, Natural History Museum, London, UK

Date of this Version

10-2003

Citation

Systematic Parasitology 56:2 (October 2003), pp. 147–154.

doi: 10.1023/A:1026198317540

Comments

Copyright © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer. Used by permission.

Abstract

Folliculovarium mediterraneum n. sp. is described and figured in detail from the intestine of the Mediterranean moray eel Muraena helena (Muraenidae) in the Scandola Nature Reserve, off Corsica in the western Mediterranean. This new species closely resembles F. gymnothoracis Gu & Shen, 1983 and F. xishaense Gu & Shen, 1983 from marine fishes off China, but it may differ from both in not having specialized circum-rynchal spines. It differs from the former by having slightly larger eggs and a longer esophagus, and from F. xishaense by having tegumental spines, a longer esophagus, and a nonrelated host (an eel rather than a serranid). The status of Folliculovarium, which was recently treated as a genus inquirendum by Overstreet & Curran (2002), is clarified by its multilobed rather than follicular ovary and other features, and remains in the Prosorhynchinae (Bucephalidae).