Two new species of Siphonostomatoida (Copepoda) found on cnidarians in Tokara Islands, Southern Japan

ABSTRACT

Two new species of siphonostomatoid copepods are described based on specimens collected off Tokara Islands located in the northern part of the Ryukyu Islands, Southern Japan. Cholomyzon multisetum sp. nov. (Coralliomyzontidae) found from the orange cup coral Tubastraea coccinea Lesson, 1829 (Hexacorallia: Scleractinia: Dendrophylliidae) has the following characters: armature formula of the antennule of the female; the outer lobe of the maxillule; and numbers of elements on the legs 1 to 3. Another species, Entomopsyllus takara sp. nov. (Entomolepididae), was found from both the Indo-Pacific blue coral Heliopora coerulea (Pallas, 1766) (Octocorallia: Helioporacea: Helioporidae) and the race coral Distichopora violacea (Pallas, 1766) (Hydrozoa: Anthoathecata: Stylasteridae). This new species of the male specimen is characterized by the antennule with shortest sixth segment, the endopod of leg 2 bearing two inner setae on the second segment and five setae on the third segment, the third exopodal and endopodal segments of leg 3 bearing three spines and three setae, respectively, and the third exopodal segment of leg 4 bearing four setae. These two species represented the first records of the families Coralliomyzontidae and Entomolepididae from Japanese waters.

http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:7C8DED0A-9CEB-405D-9BBF-FAF2043B0858

KEYWORDS:

• Coralliomyzontidae
• Entomolepididae
• scleractinian coral
• hydrozoan coral
• octocoral

Acknowledgements

We thank the captain, Akimasa Habano and crew of the TR/V Nansei Maru (Kagoshima University), and Hiroyuki Motomura, Kei Kawai, Midori Matsuoka, Takuma Fujii (Kagoshima University) and Hiroko Uyeno (Kagoshima Museum of Environment: Planet Earth and its Future) for their help in sampling.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) [KAKENHI grant numbers JP17K15304, JP17HO1913]; Special Budget of MEXT (Establishment of Research and Education Network on Biodiversity and Its Conservation in the Satsunan Islands).