A new minute ectosymbiotic harpacticoid copepod living on the sea cucumber Eupentacta fraudatrix in the East/Japan Sea

Jisu Yeom; Mikhail A Nikitin; Viatcheslav N Ivanenko; Wonchoel Lee

doi:10.7717/peerj.4979

A new minute ectosymbiotic harpacticoid copepod living on the sea cucumber Eupentacta fraudatrix in the East/Japan Sea

PeerJ. 2018 Jun 14:6:e4979. doi: 10.7717/peerj.4979. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Jisu Yeom¹, Mikhail A Nikitin², Viatcheslav N Ivanenko³, Wonchoel Lee¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Life Science, Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea.
² A.N. Belozersky Institute of Physico-chemical Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.
³ Department of Invertebrate Zoology, Biological Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.

Abstract

The ectosymbiotic copepods, Vostoklaophonte eupenta gen. & sp. nov. associated with the sea cucumber Eupentacta fraudatrix, was found in the subtidal zone of Peter the Great Bay, East/Japan Sea. The new genus, Vostoklaophonte, is similar to Microchelonia in the flattened body form, reduced mandible, maxillule and maxilla, but with well-developed prehensile maxilliped, and in the reduced segmentation and setation of legs 1-5. Most appendages of the new genus are more primitive than those of Microchelonia. The inclusion of the symbiotic genera Microchelonia and Vostoklaophonte gen. nov. in Laophontidae, as well as their close phylogenetic relationships, are supported by morphological observations and molecular data. This is the third record of laophontid harpacticoid copepods living in symbiosis with sea cucumbers recorded from the Korean and Californian coasts.

Keywords: 18S rDNA; Copepoda; Ectosymbiosis; Eupentacta fraudatrix; Laophontidae; New genus.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the BK21 Plus Program (Eco-Bio Fusion Research Team, 22A20130012352) funded by the Ministry of Education (MOE, Korea). Fieldwork, sorting of samples and molecular laboratory work were conducted with support from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (#15-29-02601, #15-54-78061 and #18-04-01192, respectively). Molecular data analyses was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (# 14-50-00029). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.