Briarosaccus RECORDS IN THE

Noever, Christoph, Olson, Andrew & Glenner, Henrik, 2016, Two new cryptic and sympatric species of the king crab parasite Briarosaccus (Cirripedia: Rhizocephala) in the North Pacific, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 176 (1), pp. 3-14 : 11

FURTHER Briarosaccus RECORDS IN THE NORTH PACIFIC

Besides the three investigated king crab species, Briarosaccus has been reported from a number of other hosts in the North Pacific. Lithodes couesi Benedict, 1895 has been reported as host to Briarosaccus from the Bering Sea ( Boschma, 1970) and the Gulf of Alaska ( Somerton, 1981). From Japan Briarosaccus has been reported on Paralomis histrix (De Haan, 1849) , Paralomis japonicus Balss, 1911 , and Paralomis multispina (Benedict, 1895) , of which P. multispina was observed with an exceptional infestation prevalence of 98.6% in 10,875 king crab specimens from the Tokyo Submarine Canyon ( Watabe, 2007). P. multispina and a further Paralomis host, P. verrilli (Benedict, 1895) , have been recorded with Briarosaccus in the Sea of Okhotsk ( Poltev, 2008). Further south, on the Californian coast, Briarosaccus has been reported on Paralithodes californiensis (Benedict, 1895) and Paralithodes rathbuni (Benedict, 1895) ( Cadien & Martin, 1999) .

The two new Briarosaccus species show strict host specificities in this study, and seem to be restricted to one or a few closely related king crabs. Therefore, it is questionable if the Briarosaccus records on other king crabs in the North Pacific can be attributed to the described species or represents further yet unrecognized ones. We assume that the second option is more likely, especially for the records on the Paralomis hosts, as well as the observations on the two further Paralithodes hosts from the Californian coast, since this genus appears to be paraphyletic ( Snow, 2010). No Briarosaccus material from these hosts was available for this study, thus the species status of their associated parasites remains unknown.