Morphological and molecular evidence on the existence of a single estuarine and rocky intertidal acanthocephalan species of Profilicollis Meyer, 1931 (Acanthocephala: Polymorphidae) along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of southern South America.
Profilicollis chasmagnathi Holcman-Spector, Mañé-Garzón & Dei-Cas, 1977 (Acanthocephala: Polymorphidae) has been reported to parasitise different grapsid species as intermediate hosts along the South Atlantic shores, i.e. Cyrtograpsus angulatus (Dana) and Neohelice granulata (Dana) in Uruguay and Cyrtograpsus altimanus (Rathbun) in Argentina. Larvae of a similar acanthocephalan described as Profilicollis antarcticus Zdzitowiecki, 1985 were recorded in the crab Hemigrapsus crenulatus (Milne-Edwards) from an estuarine habitat on the Southeast Pacific shore in Chile. Earlier studies have questioned the specific assignation of the Chilean estuarine populations of Profilicollis Meyer, 1931. The aim of this study was to re-examine the identification of these acanthocephalans by means of morphological and molecular analyses of cystacanths of Profilicollis spp. gathered from C. angulatus, N. granulata, C. altimanus and H. crenulatus. Our analyses showed that a single species of Profilicollis, P. chasmagnathi, parasitises these four crab species. The assessment of specimens from the South Shetlands Islands, the type-locality of P. antarcticus, is needed before formally proposing that P. antarcticus is a junior subjective synonym of P. chasmagnathi.
Programa de Doctorado en Biología Marina, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Austral de Chile, campus Isla Teja s/n, Valdivia, Chile. saramrodriz@gmail.com.|Instituto de Ciencias Marinas y limnológicas, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Isla Teja s/n, Valdivia, Chile. saramrodriz@gmail.com.
Sara M
0000-0002-1855-4170
SM
Rodríguez
Centro de Estudios Parasitológicos y de Vectores (CCT-La Plata-CONICET-UNLP), Calle 120 s/n entre 61 y 62, 1900, La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Julia I
JI
Diaz
Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales y Evolutivas, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Austral de Chile, Isla Teja s/n, Valdivia, Chile.
Guillermo
G
D'Elía
D000049:Acanthocephala / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics; D000818:Animals; D001267:Atlantic Ocean; D003386:Brachyura / Q000469:parasitology*; D003576:Electron Transport Complex IV / Q000235:genetics; D058507:Host Specificity; D010140:Pacific Ocean; D010802:Phylogeny; D013020:South America; D013045:Species Specificity
D003576:Electron Transport Complex IV