Nerocila longispina Miers, 1880

Martin, Melissa B., Tuah, Alia, Muhamad, Juariah H. & Bruce, Niel L., 2022, A review of the family Cymothoidae (Isopoda: Cymothooidea) infesting marine fishes from Malaysian waters, with new host and geographical records, Zootaxa 5222 (1), pp. 1-36 : 18

Nerocila longispina Miers, 1880

Nerocila longispina .— Trilles, 1994: 92.— Rameshkumar, Trilles & Ravichandran, 2011: 82–84, figs 3, 4.— Trilles, Ravichandran & Rameshkumar, 2011: 452.— Trilles, Rameshkumar & Ravichandran, 2013: 1273– 1286, fig. 2d.—Anand Kumar, Rameshkumar, Ravichandran, Rethna Priya, Nagarajan & Kwang Leng, 2015: 206–210, fig. 2c.—Anand Kumar, Rameshkumar, Ravichandran, Nagarajan, Prabakaran & Ramesh, 2017: 3–5, fig 2h.— Ravichandran, Vigneshwaran & Rameshkumar, 2019: 52 , 53.

Type material. The Natural History Museum, London ( BMNH 1849: 86). Presented by I. Ward, according to Ellis (1981); figured by Bruce (1987b).

Type locality. India, Malabar coast .

Type host. Host type unknown.

Host. Terapontidae and Sciaenidae : Therapon puta (Cuvier, 1829) , Otolithes ruber (Bloch & Schneider, 1801) ( Rameshkumar et al. 2011, Anand Kumar et al. 2015, 2017, Ravichandran et al. 2019).

Distribution. Malayan and Indonesian regions (Malabar and Java); India, south-eastern coast ( Miers 1880; Ellis 1981; Bruce 1987b; Rameshkumar et al. 2011; Anand Kumar et al. 2015, 2017).

Remarks. Nerocila longispina has a body twice as long as wide, widest at pereonites 6 and 7; cephalon anterior margin narrowly rounded or with a slender medial point; coxae 2–7 with long pointed, processes; pleotelson wider than long, smoothly rounded; uropod rami extending beyond posterior margin of pleotelson, exopod slightly longer than endopod; uropod endopod with notch on medial margin and coarsely serrated lateral margin ( Ravichandran et al. 2019).

Miers (1880) established the species with only an illustrated lateral view of the sixth coxae and an unknown host. Bruce (1987) later provided some figures (dorsal view, ventral view, cephalon, pereopod 7, and uropods) of the holotype with minimal description. Subsequently, Rameshkumar et al. (2011) diagnosed and redescribed the species from a different examined specimen collected from the host Therapon puta and Otholites ruber from Vedaranyam, south-eastern coasts of India.