Revisión del género Asterocheres Boeck 1860 (copepoda, siphonostomatoida, asterocheridae)

Los copépodos son un grupo de diminutos crustáceos acuáticos con una amplia diversidad de estructuras y hábitos así como una gran capacidad de adaptación. Aunque estos pequeños crustáceos son conocidos como miembros abundantes del plancton y del bentos, también han tenido un gran éxito ecológico formando distintos grados de asociación con los diversos filos de Metazoos. El orden Siphonostomatoida es uno de los nueve órdenes de la subclase Copepoda, y el único que incluye especies exclusivamente asociadas o parásitas de otros metazoos. La autapomorfía que define a este orden es la presencia de una mandíbula con estilete típicamente contenido en un cono oral o sifón. La familia con mayor número de géneros es Asterocheridae, que es además una de las más plesiomórficas. Esta familia es muy heterogénea y sus representantes pueden vivir como asociados internos o externos de una amplia variedad de filos de invertebrados marinos aunque los hospedadores de varios géneros y muchas especies son aún desconocidos. El género que presenta un mayor número de especies es Asterocheres; si bien muchas descripciones están incompletas o son erróneas, lo que hace muy difícil compararlas con sus congéneres. En la mayoría de los casos, estas especies no han vuelto a ser recogidas desde su descripción original, por tanto para estudiarlas hay que recurrir al material depositado en los museos. En la presente memoria se revisa el género Asterocheres a partir de material recogido por personal del grupo de investigación y material depositado en distintos museos europeos: (1) el género Asterocheres se compone de 100 especies nominales; (2) se describen ocho especies nuevas; (3) se redescriben 21 especies; (4) se nombran dos géneros nuevos; (5) se le devuelve el status de “especie válida” a tres especies consideradas previamente como sinónimas; (6) se considera una especie como taxón indeterminado, dos especies como “incompletamente descritas” y tres especies como inquirendae; (7) se relega Asterocheres violaceus a sinónimo de Asterocheres echinicola; (8) se nombra lectotipo para la especie Asterocheres stimulans; (9) se confirma la clasificación inquirendae para Asterocheres longisetosus y se cataloga su descripción como errónea; y (10) se rehabilitan las grafías originales de los epítetos específicos boeckii y lilljeborgii de acuerdo con el Código Internacional de Nomenclatura Zoológica.Copepods are diminutive aquatic crustaceans with a wide variety of structures and habits as well as a great capacity for adaptation. Although these small crustaceans are known to be abundant members of marine benthic and plankton, copepods also have an amazing ecological success living in symbiotic relationships with diverse metazoan phyla. Siphonostomatoida is one of the nine orders belonging to subclass Copepoda and the only one that includes exclusively associates or parasites of other metazoan species. The presence of a mandible with a stylet which tipically lies within the lumen of an oral cone is an autapomorphy defining this order. Most of the genera of this order belong to the Asterocheridae which is the most plesiomorphic family within Siphonostomatoida. This family is very heterogenous with members living both as internal or external associated of a very wide variety of marine invertebrates phyla but host are unknown for many species and several genera. Asterocheres is the largest and most speciose genus within the Asterocheridae, although several species are poorly or incompletely described that are hardly comparable with other congeners. Most of these poorly known species have not been recorded since their original descriptions and their studies are to be based on type material deposited in museums. In the present revision of the genus Asterocheres, material collected by members of this research team and type material deposited in museums are studied: (1) Asterocheres is composed by 100 nominal species; (2) eight new species are described; (3) twenty one species are redescribed; (4) two new genus are erected; (5) three species considered as junior synonyms are reinstated as valid species; (6) one species has been classified as “undetermined taxon”, two species as “incompletely described” and three species as inquirendae; (7) Asterocheres violaceus is relegated to a synonym of Asterocheres echinicola; (8) the lectotype of Asterocheres stimulans is designated; (9) the classification of inquirendae for Asterocheres longisetosus is confirmed; y (10) the original spelling of the specific epithet boeckii and lilljeborgii are reinstated according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature

Asterocheres hirsutus, a new species of parasitic copepod (Siphonostomatoida : Asterocheridae) associated with an Antarctic hexactinellid sponge

The asterocherid siphonostomatoid copepod Asterocheres hirsutus, a new species, is described from a hexactinellid sponge of the genus Rossella Carter collected during the Polastern cruise ANT XVII/3, off South Shetland Islands. The distinctive features of this new species are: a female with 21-segmented and a male with 17-segmented antennules, praecoxal endite of maxillule more than four times longer than palp and the ornamentation of the posterior surface of legs 1–4. A detailed description of both sexes is presented

Five new coexisting species of copepod crustaceans of the genus Spaniomolgus (Poecilostomatoida: Rhynchomolgidae), symbionts of the stony coral Stylophorapistillata (Scleractinia)

Spaniomolgus is a symbiotic genus of copepods of the poecilostomatoid family Rhynchomolgidae and is known to be associated with shallow-water reef-building hermatypic corals. Three species of this genus were previously found only in washings of Acropora and Stylophora in northern Madagascar. Four coral morphotypes of Stylophorapistillata (Pocilloporidae) were collected by SCUBA at 1 to 28 m depth in five sites in the Saudi Arabian Red Sea in 2013. Copepods found on these colonies were studied using light, confocal and scanning electron microscopy. Five new, and one known, species of the genus Spaniomolgus were discovered in washings and inside the galls of the hermatypic coral S.pistillata. The description of these new species (Spaniomolgusglobussp. n., S.stylophorussp. n., S.dentatussp. n., S.maculatussp. n., and S.acutussp. n.) and a key for the identification of all of its congeners is provided herein

Two copepod species largely confused: Asterocheres echinicola (Norman, 1868) and A. violaceus (Claus, 1889). Taxonomical implications

Due to its extremely brief description, Asterocheres echinicola (Norman, 1868) has been confused with some Asterocheres species such as Asterocheres suberitis Giesbrecht, 1897, Asterocheres parvus Giesbrecht, 1897 and Asterocheres latus (Brady, 1872). Furthermore, this species has been considered conspecific with Cyclopicera lata (Brady, 1872) and Asterocheres kervillei Canu, 1898. The objective of this paper is to study the syntypes of Asterocheres echinicola deposited in the Museum of Natural History of London together with abundant material from this and other institutions. Re-examination of these syntypes revealed that Asterocheres echinicola was conspecific with the currently known Asterocheres species, A. violaceus. Therefore, this latter species should be considered as a junior synonym of the former. The specimens described by Brady as Cyclopicera lata represent distinctively Asterocheres echinicola (=Asterocheres violaceus) and are identical to Sars’s Ascomyzom parvum and to Giesbrecht’s Asterocheres echinicola. We propose to rename Cyclopicera lata as Asterocheres latus (Brady, 1872), and raise Sars’ Ascomyzon latus, a species which is different from Asterocheres echinicola (=Asterocheres violaceus) and from Asterocheres latus (=Cyclopicera lata), as a new species. In this paper, we not only redescribe both species A. echinicola and A. latus, but also compare them with their previous descriptions, with the new materialavailable and with their congeners. The redescription of Asterocheres latus revealed new specific differences between this species and Asterocheres kervillei, a species considered as synonymous of Asterocheres latus for almost 40 years. We strongly recommend that these differences are suffcient to consider these two species different. Finally, we analyzed the implications of all these taxonomical changes with respect to the diversity of the hosts utilized by these copepods and their geographical distribution