Description of Goussia kuehae n. sp. (Apicomplexa: Eimeriidae) infecting the Asian seabass, Lates calcarifer (Bloch)(Perciformes: Latidae), cultured in Malaysian fish farms

Culturing fishes in marine cages is a rapidly developing area of marine aquaculture. The Asian seabass Lates calcarifer (Bloch) is a fast growing good quality fish that is readily cultured in intensive systems in the South Asian region and in Malaysia in particular. Although several papers have been published to date on viral, bacterial, parasitic and fungal organisms causing diseases in the Asian seabass, the occurrence of a coccidian infection in this species has only recently been recorded. We collected sporulated and unsporulated oo¨cysts of a new species of Goussia Labbe´, 1986, from the mucus covering the epithelium of the intestine of L. calcarifer. This paper provides a description of Goussia kuehae n. sp. Sporulated oo¨cysts of this species are ellipsoidal, 37–40 lm in length and 28–30 lm in width. The ellipsoidal sporocysts are relatively small, 15.2–17 9 5.7–8 lm, and located loosely in the oo¨cyst. There are residual bodies both in the oo¨cysts and the sporocysts. Goussia kuehae n. sp. differs from all known species of Goussia in the large size of the oo¨cysts and in having two types of oo¨cyst residuum

Bucephalidae (Platyhelminthes: Digenea) of Plectropomus (Serranidae: Epinephelinae) in the tropical Pacific

We examined four species of Plectropomus Oken, 1817 (Serranidae: Epinephelinae), Plectropomus areolatus (Rüppell), Plectropomus laevis (Lacepède), Plectropomus leopardus (Lacepède) and Plectropomus maculatus (Bloch) from sites off Heron Island and Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia (GBR), and the Gambier Islands, French Polynesia. Three new species of Neidhartia Nagaty, 1937, five new species of Prosorhynchus Odhner, 1905, and one previously described species, Prosorhynchus freitasi Nagaty, 1937, are characterised. The three species of Neidhartia, Neidhartia haywardi n. sp., Neidhartia plectropomi n. sp. and Neidhartia tyleri n. sp. are readily distinguishable morphologically. Two of the six species of Prosorhynchus (Prosorhynchus lesteri n. sp. and Prosorhynchus wrightae n. sp.) are easily distinguished from their other congeners by morphology but the other four species (P. freitasi, Prosorhynchus heronensis n. sp., Prosorhynchus munozae n. sp. and Prosorhynchus plectropomi n. sp.) are generally similar in morphology and were only distinguished initially by comparing their ITS2 rRNA sequences. Three additional taxa, one from the GBR and two from French Polynesia, were recognised as distinct on the basis that their ITS2 rRNA sequences differed from those of the new taxa described here; these species remain unnamed for the present. Inter-specific divergence observed within these genera in the ITS2 rRNA ranged from 10 to 42 base pairs (4-16\ua0%) for species of Neidhartia and 2-57 base pairs (3-21\ua0%) for species of Prosorhynchus. Inter-generic divergences were 42-55 base pairs (17-21\ua0%). No intraspecific variation in the ITS2 rRNA region was observed for any of the six species for which multiple sequence replicates were obtained. Phylogenetic analysis of 12 operational taxa from Plectropomus together with sequences of three other species from epinepheline serranids demonstrated that Neidhartia and Prosorhynchus were reciprocally monophyletic with the exception that P. wrightae n. sp. fell either within or basal to the Neidhartia species. The richness of bucephalids in species of Plectropomus appears to be exceptional within the Serranidae relative to that observed in other serranid genera in the tropical Indo-West Pacific