Anilocra Leach, 1818

Welicky, Rachel L., Hadfield, Kerry A., Sikkel, Paul C. & Smit, Nico J., 2017, Molecular assessment of three species of Anilocra (Isopoda, Cymothoidae) ectoparasites from Caribbean coral reef fishes, with the description of Anilocrabrillae sp. n., ZooKeys 663, pp. 21-43 : 23

Genus Anilocra Leach, 1818

Anilocra Leach 1818: 348, 350. Desmarest 1825: 306; Edwards 1840: 255; Dana 1853: 747; Schioedte and Meinert 1881: 100; Gerstaecker 1882: 231; Richardson 1905: 25; Hale 1926: 210; Schultz 1969: 153; Kensley 1978: 78; Kussakin 1979: 281; Brusca 1981: 140; Brusca and Iverson 1985: 45. Bruce 1987: 89; Trilles 1975: 303; Trilles 1994: 55; Thatcher and Blumenfeldt 2001: 270.

Canolira Leach, 1818: 350.

Epichthyes Herklots, 1870: 122.

Diagnosis.

A detailed diagnosis was given by Bruce (1987).

Type species.

The type species for this genus is Anilocra cuvieri Leach, 1818, junior synonym of Anilocra physodes (Linnaeus, 1758) (see Bruce 1987); by subsequent designation ( Kussakin 1979).

Leach (1818) described three species: Anilocra cuvieri , Anilocra mediterranea Leach, 1818, and Anilocra capensis Leach, 1818 without designating a type species. A. cuvieri was designated as the type species by Kussakin (1979). Both Anilocra cuvieri and A. mediterranea were synonymized with A. physodes ( Trilles 1975; Ellis 1981).

Remarks.

The body of female Anilocra is dorsally symmetrical and strongly vaulted. The posterior margins of their cephalon are smooth and straight, and the rostrum is more blunt than pointed. The rostrum folds into the area between the antennula bases. The antennula is shorter than the antenna. The posterolateral margins of the pereonites are not produced. Coxae 1-3 are short, posteriorly rounded and do not form a rounded point posteriorly, whereas coxae 4-6 are longer, less rounded and more elongate than coxae 1-3, and form a rounded point posteriorly. The pereopods gradually increase in size towards the posterior.

In the Cymothoidae , the external-attaching genera include but are not limited to Anilocra , Nerocila Leach, 1818, Renocila Miers, 1880, Creniola Bruce, 1987, and Pleopodias Richardson, 1910. Anilocra can be distinguished from Nerocila by the posterior margin of the cephalon, which is conspicuously trilobed in Nerocila , whereas the posterior margin of the cephalon of Anilocra is not tri-lobed to weakly tri-lobed. The posterolateral pereonite margins of Nerocila are more produced, elongate and pointed than that of Anilocra . In the Caribbean, some species of Anilocra and Renocila share numerous similarities, but in Anilocra pereopod 6 is shorter in length than pereopod 7, whereas in Renocila pereopods 6 and 7 are of similar length. To date the genera Creniola and Pleopodias have not been reported from the Caribbean.