Nerocila sigani Bowman & Tareen 1983
Creators: name: Ravichandran, S.
name: Vigneshwaran, P.
name: Rameshkumar, G.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Malacostraca
Isopoda
Cymothoidae
Nerocila
Nerocila sigani

description: Nerocila sigani Bowman & Tareen, 1983
Nerocila sigani Bowman & Tareen, 1983: 12, fig. 9.— Bruce, 1987b: 406 —Bruce & Harrisson-Nelson 1988: 597–598.— Trilles 1994: 100.— Kensley 2001: 234.— Kazmi, Schotte & Yousuf, 2002: 104, fig. 89.— Trilles, Ravichandran & Rameshkumar, 2011: 453.— Trilles, Rameshkumar & Ravichandran, 2013: 1273–1286, figs 2i, 3e–h, 4, 5f–j.—Rameshkumar, Ravichandran, Sivasubramanian & Trilles, 2013a: 42, fig. 1i. Dev Roy & Mitra, 2013: 1134–1135, fig. 1.
Type and type locality. The holotype, deposited at National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution (USNM 190714), from South of Faylaka, Kuwait (Arabian Gulf).
Material examined. 1 ovig. female, (25 mm) (MNHN-IU-2009-1935) and 1 ovig. female, (24 mm) (CAS / MBRM 655) Mudasalodai, 09 December 2011, from Siganus canaliculatus (Park, 1797), coll. G. Rameshkumar.
Remarks. Nerocila sigani briefly diagnosed and described by Bowman & Tareen (1983). Above the Indian material most recently carefully treated and redescribed by Trilles et al. (2013). Nerocila sigani has a body about 2.0 times as long as wide, widest between pereonites 5 and 6; cephalon broadly rounded in anteriorly; pereopods without swelling in dactyls; posteroventral corners of all pereonites produced into points; coxae produced into successively longer pointed processes, those of coxae 1–5 subequal to posteroventral processes of pereonites, those of coxae 6 and 7 distinctly longer; pleotelson about 2.3 times wider than long, smoothly rounded, with no trace of the caudomedial lobe; pereopods 1–5 with subequal dactyls spines; exopod of uropod linear, slightly longer than endopod; endopod with a deep notch on medial margin and serrate lateral margin. pereopods 6 and 7 with marginal.
Bowman & Tareen (1983) described from a single specimen of Nerocila sigani, and N. arres were separated by: 1, presence or absence of a caudomedial lobe; 2, presence or absence of dactylus nodules; 3, antennula articles 1 and 2 being distinct or partially fused; 4, uropod exopod linear or curved; 5, deeper uropod serrations in N. arres than in N. sigani. Bruce & Harrisson-Nelson (1988) stated that N. sigani is the senior synonym to N. arres. Trilles et al. (2013) reveal that the synonymy of these two species cannot be maintained (see section on N. arres).
Distribution. Recorded from the Persian Gulf, Kuwait (Bowman & Tareen 1983). Recent records are from northern Arabian Sea (Kazmi et al. 2002) and southeast coast of India (Bruce & Harrisson-Nelson, 1988; Trilles et al. 2013; Rameshkumar et al. 2013a).
Host. Nerocila sigani collected from the family Siganidae: Siganus oramin (as Siganus canaliculatus (Park, 1797)) (Bowman & Tareen 1983; Kazmi et al. 2002; Trilles et al. 2013; Rameshkumar et al. 2013a) and Carangidae: Parastromateus niger (Bruce & Harrisson-Nelson 1988).
description: Published as part of Ravichandran, S., Vigneshwaran, P. & Rameshkumar, G., 2019, A taxonomic review of the fish parasitic isopod family Cymothoidae Leach, 1818 (Crustacea: Isopoda: Cymothooidea) of India, pp. 1-99 in Zootaxa 4622 (1) on pages 60-61, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4622.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/3379899