Choniosphaera indica, a copepod parasitic on the crab Neptunus sp

Abstract

The choniostomatids parasitic on Crustacea have been exhaustively studied by Hansen. To the six genera and forty-three species he had described in 1897, he added a new genus and three more species in 1904, and seven more species in 1923. Scott (1904, 1905, 1907) described seven more species, Fraenkel (1915) three new species, Monod (1930) one, and Blake (1929) two. In 1929, however, Connolly described a new genus Choniosphaera and its type species C. cancrorum, from parasites found on American crabs Cancer amoenas, C. irroratus and C. borealis. In the present paper a new species Choniosphaera indica, parasitic on the edible crab Neptunus sanguinolentus of Madras, is described.