Prosorhynchine trematodes (Digenea: Bucephalidae) from epinephelines (Perciformes: Serranidae) on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia

Six new species of bucephalid trematodes from the prosorhynchine bucephalid genera Prosorhynchus Odhner, 1905 and Neidhartia Nagaty, 1937 are reported from the epinepheline genera Cephalopholis, Cromileptes, Epinephelus and Variola on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Two species of Prosorhynchus and one of Neidhartia are reported from Epinephelus spp., P. jexi n. sp. from E. quoyanus, P. lafii n. sp. from E. fuscoguttatus and N. epinepheli n. sp. from E. maculatus. The other three new species are P. robertsthomsoni n. sp. from Cephalopholis argus, C. cyanostigma and C. miniata, P. conorjonesi n. sp. from Cromileptes altivelis, and P. milleri n. sp. from Variola louti. Extensive examinations of other piscivorous fish species from the Great Barrier Reef have not revealed these six bucephalid species, which appear to be restricted at least to the host genera from which they are reported here

Bucephalidae (Platyhelminthes: Digenea) of Plectropomus (Serranidae: Epinephelinae) in the tropical Pacific

We examined four species of Plectropomus Oken, 1817 (Serranidae: Epinephelinae), Plectropomus areolatus (Rüppell), Plectropomus laevis (Lacepède), Plectropomus leopardus (Lacepède) and Plectropomus maculatus (Bloch) from sites off Heron Island and Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia (GBR), and the Gambier Islands, French Polynesia. Three new species of Neidhartia Nagaty, 1937, five new species of Prosorhynchus Odhner, 1905, and one previously described species, Prosorhynchus freitasi Nagaty, 1937, are characterised. The three species of Neidhartia, Neidhartia haywardi n. sp., Neidhartia plectropomi n. sp. and Neidhartia tyleri n. sp. are readily distinguishable morphologically. Two of the six species of Prosorhynchus (Prosorhynchus lesteri n. sp. and Prosorhynchus wrightae n. sp.) are easily distinguished from their other congeners by morphology but the other four species (P. freitasi, Prosorhynchus heronensis n. sp., Prosorhynchus munozae n. sp. and Prosorhynchus plectropomi n. sp.) are generally similar in morphology and were only distinguished initially by comparing their ITS2 rRNA sequences. Three additional taxa, one from the GBR and two from French Polynesia, were recognised as distinct on the basis that their ITS2 rRNA sequences differed from those of the new taxa described here; these species remain unnamed for the present. Inter-specific divergence observed within these genera in the ITS2 rRNA ranged from 10 to 42 base pairs (4-16\ua0%) for species of Neidhartia and 2-57 base pairs (3-21\ua0%) for species of Prosorhynchus. Inter-generic divergences were 42-55 base pairs (17-21\ua0%). No intraspecific variation in the ITS2 rRNA region was observed for any of the six species for which multiple sequence replicates were obtained. Phylogenetic analysis of 12 operational taxa from Plectropomus together with sequences of three other species from epinepheline serranids demonstrated that Neidhartia and Prosorhynchus were reciprocally monophyletic with the exception that P. wrightae n. sp. fell either within or basal to the Neidhartia species. The richness of bucephalids in species of Plectropomus appears to be exceptional within the Serranidae relative to that observed in other serranid genera in the tropical Indo-West Pacific

Cryptic species of Euryakaina n. g. (Digenea: Cryptogonimidae) from sympatric lutjanids in the Indo-West Pacific

A survey of the endohelminth fauna of Indo-West Pacific Lutjanidae (Perciformes) revealed the presence of the species Siphoderina manilensis (Velasquez, 1961) Miller & Cribb, 2008 and S. marina (Hafeezullah & Siddiqi, 1970) Miller & Cribb, 2008 in seven Lutjanus spp. from sites off the Great Barrier Reef, the Maldives, New Caledonia and Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia. A combination of morphological and ribosomal DNA analyses of these cryptogonimids prompted the transfer of these taxa to a new genus, Euryakaina n. g., as E. manilensis n. comb. and E. marina n. comb., based on comparative analysis with other cryptogonimid taxa. Euryakaina n. g. is distinguished from all other cryptogonimid genera by the combination of a fusiform body, the few relatively small, widely spaced oral spines (sometimes absent), a highly lobed ovary, opposite to slightly oblique testes, vitelline follicles that extend from the anterior margin of the testes to slightly posterior to the intestinal bifurcation, and an excretory vesicle that bifurcates dorsal to the ovary and reunites briefly slightly posterior to the intestinal bifurcation. Morphometric analysis of these taxa alone suggests they should be reduced to synonymy, but DNA sequence analyses and ecological niche partitioning provide evidence that they form a cryptic species complex in sympatric lutjanids in the Indo-West Pacific. The secondary structure of the ITS2 rDNA for species of Euryakaina was also modelled and analysed for the presences of compensatory base changes (CBCs) or hemi-CBCs in order to explore the usefulness of these changes as a tool to help elucidate the taxonomy of this complex system. We also report what we interpret here as intraspecific variation in the ITS2 rDNA between individuals of E. manilensis from Lutjanus vitta recovered off the Great Barrier Reef and New Caledonia