Anuropodione carolinensis, Markham, 1974

Anuropodione carolinensis View in CoL , deep-sea, Brazil, Munida iris , parasitic isopod.

The isopod family Bopyridae Rafinesque, 1815 contains species that are parasites of calanoid copepods as their intermediate hosts and decapod crustaceans as their definitive hosts. These parasites are usually found as a female and male pair in the branchial chamber of the definitive host, causing deformations in the carapace of the host or they can occur ventrally under the pleon of the host ( Boyko and Williams, 2009; Williams and Boyko, 2012). According to Cardoso (2010), Segadilha (2017), Brito et al. (2018), and Horch et al. (2018), approximately 23 bopyrid species have been recorded from Brazilian waters, ranging from rivers (near coastal zones) as parasites of prawns (e.g., Macrobrachium Bate, 1868 ) to the deep-sea, where they have been found parasitizing species of Munida Leach, 1820 , Nephropsis Wood-Mason, 1872 and Paralomis White, 1856 .

The genus Anuropodione Bourdon, 1967 has a widespread distribution, occurring in all oceans, especially in relatively deep waters around 200–700 m ( Williams and Brown, 1972; Wenner and Windsor, 1979), and is composed of five species: A. amphiandra ( Codreanu, Codreanu and Pike, 1966) , A. carolinensis Markham, 1974 , A. dubius (Nierstrasz and Brender à Brandis, 1929), A. megacephalon Markham, 1974 and A. senegalensis Bourdon, 1967 ( Boyko et al., 2008 onwards). To date, species of Anuropodione have only been recorded as parasites of squat lobsters, especially those belonging to the genus Munida ( Williams and Brown, 1972; Markham, 1974; Wenner and Windsor, 1979); the host of A. dubius is not certain as it was given as “ Galathea spec. ” by Nierstrasz and Brender à Brandis (1929). Despite wide distribution of the genus, no species of Anuropodione has ever been recorded from the South Atlantic. In this paper we report the first occurrence of the genus Anuropodione and the species A. carolinensis Markham, 1974 collected as a parasite of the squat lobsters M. iris A. Milne-Edwards, 1880 , from Brazilian waters in the South Atlantic.

The sampling was carried out on the continental slope of Potiguar Basin, located in the northeast of Brazil (03/ 05°S, 38/ 35°W), covering the states of Ceará ( CE) and Rio Grande do Norte ( RN). Specimens were collected on board the R / V Seward Johnson in May 2011, as part of the project Avaliação da biota bentônica e planctônica da Bacia Potiguar e Ceará (Bpot) coordinated by Petróleo Brasileiro S /A (Petrobras). Bottom trawls were carried out on the continental slope between 150 and 2068 m depth using a semiballoon otter trawl with 50 mm mesh size and 18 m of mouth opening GoogleMaps .

After sampling, specimens were fixed in 70% ethanol, with parasites initially identified to species following Markham (1974) and deposited in the carcinological collection of the“Museu de Oceanografia Prof. Petrônio Alves Coelho (MOUFPE)” at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil. The following body measurements were taken with a caliper (0.01 mm): total length (TL) (for M. iris and A. carolinensis ); carapace length (CL) and carapace width (CW) (for M. iris ); maximum pereon width (W) (for A. carolinensis ).