Pseudocollinia brintoni

Super Group: 
Alveolata
Phylum: 
Ciliophora
Sub-Class: 
Apostomatia
Order: 
Apostomatida
Family: 
Pseudocollinidae
Genus: 
Pseudocollinia
Species: 
brintoni
Authority: 
Gómez-Gutiérrez, Strüder- Kypke, Lynn, Shaw, Aguilar-Méndez, López-Cortés, Martínez-Gómez, Robinson

Diagnosis

Diagnosis_Genus: Blood-infecting parasitoid ciliates of krill with a polymorphic life cycle, including trophont, tomont, protomite, tomite, and phoront stages. Ciliates contain a cone-shaped oral cavity in the anterior one-third of body with the left wall of the oral cavity covered by a field of ciliated kinetosomes and the oral cavity opening bordered by at least 2 oral kineties.
Diagnosis_Species: All life cycle stages possess 12 to 18 somatic kineties, with at least the anterior end of Kinety n–2 abutting on Kinety 2; the oral cavity is bordered by 2 oral kineties; the ciliate infects a sacspawning euphausiid with subtropical and neritic distribution.
Body_length: 28–35 µm
Body_wide: 13–21 µm
Kineties_total: 14–18
Kineties_oral: 2

Etymology

The genus name is given due to the presumed similarities to apostome ciliates of the genus Collinia, hence ‘pseudo’ from pseudes (Gr., false). Gender: female.

The species name is given in memory and honor of Professor Edward Brinton (1924−2010), Scripps Institution of Oceanography (San Diego, USA) who was an outstanding expert on the taxonomy, ecology, population biology, zoogeography, and evolution of Euphausiacea.

Type illustration / Type locality / Type specimen

Type locality: Northeast Pacific, southwest coast of Baja California peninsula, México, at the continental shelf off Magdalena Bay (24° 24.33’N, 111° 57.13’W) collected on 25 March 2004 (Table 3).
Type host: Nyctiphanes simplex Hansen, 1911
Type specimen: A female Nyctiphanes simplex (11.2 mm total length) infected with trophont and tomont stages of Pseudocollinia brintoni gen. nov. sp. nov. located inside the cephalothorax and abdomen (paratype USNM 1154442) and a protargolstained slide of P. brintoni gen. nov., sp. nov. cells in the tomite stage (holotype USNM 1156976) were deposited in the International Protozoan Type Slide Collection of the Department of Invertebrate Zoology of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. The holotype (Figs. 5A,B & 6A,B) is circled in black on the underside of the slide.

Ecology

Substrate: endozoic
Salinity: marine
pH: neutral

Life cycle

Reproduction_mode: asexual
Symbiont: horizontal
Resting_stage: cysts

Feeding behaviour

Parasitism

Mode of locomotion

ciliate

Observation site(s)