Occurrence of praniza larvae of a gnathiid (Isopoda, Gnathiidae) on wild-caught orange-spotted grouper, Epinephelus coioides (Hamilton, 1822) (Perciformes, Serranidae), in Lingayen Gulf, Philippines

Abstract

Praniza larvae of a gnathiid isopod were retrieved from the gills and branchial cavity of wild-caught orange-spotted grouper, Epinephelus coioides (Hamilton, 1822) (Perciformes, Serranidae) in Lingayen Gulf, Philippines. The prevalence and mean intensity of the praniza larvae were 82.3% and 2.2 on the gill filaments and 23.5% and 2.5 in the branchial cavity, respectively. The praniza larva is described and illustrated as there has been no work on the morphology of the parasite in the country where it was collected, to date. This report involves a new record for larval gnathiid infection on E. coioides in the Philippines.

First record and molecular characterisation of two Gnathia species (Crustacea, Isopoda, Gnathiidae) from Philippine coral reefs, including a summary of all Central-Indo Pacific Gnathia species

“…Based on previous studies ( Sikkel et al, 2014 ; Cruz-Lacierda and Nagasawa, 2017 ; Santos and Sikkel, 2017 ), 34 of 37 investigated fish species from 14 families in the central Philippines have been shown to be infested by gnathiid isopods. Five fish species were infested by more than one gnathiid morph ( Santos and Sikkel, 2017 ) and G. malaysiensis was found on the greatest number of hosts (8) by Santos and Sikkel (2017) .…”

“…Yet, to date, only four unidentified species of gnathiid isopods have been mentioned in literature ( Santos and Sikkel, 2017 ) and no Philippine gnathiids have been described or named. Thus, especially given the high biodiversity of the region, research on coral reef gnathiids in the Philippines lags far behind other regions, with only five gnathiid studies to our knowledge being conducted to date: one study in the Luzon region the North of the Philippines ( Cruz-Lacierda and Nagasawa, 2017 ) and the other four in the Visayas region in the central Philippines ( Sikkel et al, 2014 ; Santos and Sikkel, 2017 ; Shodipo et al, 2019 , 2020 ).…”