Species of the Parasitic Isopod Genera Ceratothoa and Glossobuis (Crustacea: Cymothoidae) from the Mouths of Flying Fishes and Halfbeaks (Beloniformes) Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology, Number 489

摘要

Beloniform fishes are infested by cymothoid isopods on the body surface, in the gill chambers, and in the mouth. Only flying fishes have these isopods on the body surface: Nerocila exocoeti Pillai, 1954, on Exocoetus brachypterus, and Nerocila trichiura (Miers, 1877) on Exocoetus evolans.E. volitans, and Cypselurus nigricans (see Trilles, 1975; Kurochkin, 1980; Bruce and Harrison-Nelson, 1988). The gill-infesting isopods, all members of the genus Mothocya, have been treated in detail by Bruce (1986) in a revision of Mothocya that included material from non-Beloniform host families. The mouthinfesting isopods, except for a few specimens of the taxonomically difficult genus Cymothoa not dealt with here, are species of Ceratothoa and Glossobius. Glossobius is fully revised here, and appears to be restricted to hosts in the families Exocoetidae and Hemiramphidae. Members of the genus Ceratothoa infest a much wider range of fish species, and only three of the more than 40 nominal species are recorded herein from hosts in the Exocoetidae and Hemiramphidae.