Abstract
This report describes the first record of the piscicolid leech Pontobdella macrothela from Mozambique waters and the first record of P. macrothela parasitizing a Grey Reef Shark (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos). The leech, P. macrothela, was found attached externally between the third and fourth gill slits of a shark captured off Vamizi Island, Quirimbas Archipelago, northern Mozambique.
Highlights
The marine leeches of the family Piscicolidae are the only annelids known to parasitize elasmobranchs (Caira and Healy 2004)
This report describes the first record of the piscicolid leech Pontobdella macrothela from Mozambique waters and the first record of P. macrothela parasitizing a Grey Reef Shark (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos)
The purpose of this paper is to report the first host record of the Grey Reef Shark, Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos (Bleeker, 1856), for the marine leech P. macrothela, the first record of P. macrothela from Mozambican waters, and one of few records of P. macrothela in the Western Indian Ocean
Summary
The marine leeches of the family Piscicolidae are the only annelids known to parasitize elasmobranchs (Caira and Healy 2004). There are 23 known species of piscicolid leeches adapted to feed on the high-urea content of elasmobranchs, all of which are proboscis-bearing ectoparasites that inhabit exterior sites of their hosts such as fins and claspers as well as orifices such as the mouth (Llewellyn 1966, Caira and Healy 2004, Kvist et al 2016). Pontobdella macrothela (Schmarda, 1861) has a widespread distribution in the warm waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans (Sawyer et al 1975, Burreson and Passarelli 2015) with at least 20 known elasmobranch hosts (Caira and Healy 2004, Yamauchi et al 2008, Pollerspöck and Straube 2015, Daly et al 2019).
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