New epizoic diatom (Bacillariophyta) species from sea turtles in the Eastern Caribbean and South Pacific

Abstract

Obligately epizoic diatoms (Bacillariophyta) on vertebrates were first described from cetaceans, but turtles, both freshwater and marine, also host very specific floras. Several scrapings of juvenile Chelonia mydas have allowed the description of two new diatom taxa whose valves are asymmetrical about the transapical axis, Tripterion societatis sp. nov. and Chelonicola caribeana sp. nov. These taxa are very small and show some morphological plasticity. Such plasticity might suggest their inclusion in genera with slightly different characteristics from Tripterion and Chelonicola as originally delimited. Based on our observations, an emended diagnosis is proposed for Chelonicola.

Keywords:

• Chelonia mydas
• Chelonicola
• new species
• Lesser Antilles
• Society Archipelago
• Tripterion

Acknowledgements

We warmly acknowledge Magali Soria for providing Moon’s scraping (Moorea, French Polynesia, ‘Te mana o te moana’), Saúl Blanco Lanza (Universidad de León, León, Spain) for his help with Latin and Genowefa Daniszewska-Kowalczyk (Palaeoceanology Unit, University of Szczecin, Poland) for material preparation. Many thanks are due to Yonko Gorand for SEM assistance (C2M, Perpignan University, France) and to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive remarks. Eileen Cox and Marina Potapova (Respectively Editor in Chief and Associate Editor, Diatom Research) are also acknowledged for their help. Participation of AW was financed by a Topical subsidy of the Polish Ministry of Science and Education and DC appreciated the financial support of the ANTIDOT project (Pépinière Interdisciplinaire Guyane, Mission pour l'Interdisciplinarité, CNRS), the French Guiana Regional Council, the EDF Foundation and Fondation de France, DEAL Martinique, Office de l'Eau Martinique, FEDER Martinique. Funding for this research was partly provided by the DIATOMS project (LIST – Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology). We also acknowledge the Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien UMR 7178-CNRS/Unistra and the CNRS-USR 3278-Labex CORAIL for supporting this research.