Notes on a Species of Lernaea Parasitic in the Larvae of Rana clamitans

Abstract

From October, 1929, to March, 1930, and during the spring of 1931, first year tadpoles of Rana clamitans from a goldfish hatchery near Cincinnati, Ohio, were observed to be infected by a new species of Copepoda for which the name Lernaea ranae is proposed. The genus Lernaea was erected by Linnaeus in 1758 to contain three species, two of which, L. cyprinacea and L. salmnonea, are parasitic in fresh-water fishes, while the third, L. asellina, occurs in marine fish. L. salmronea and L. asellina have since been named types of the genera Salmonicola and Medesicaste respectively, leaving L. cyprinacea as type of the genus Lernaea. Excellent historical and critical reviews of the genus and of the family Lernaeidae as well as bibliographic references to earlier papers are contained in papers by Wilson (1917, 1918). Subsequently, the species L. haplocephala, described by Cunningham in 1914 from Lake Tanganyika and the Nile, was reported from the Congo basin by Wilson (1920a) and from the Cameroun by Brian (1927). Leigh-Sharpe (1925) described L. elegans from the buccal cavity of the Japanese eel, Anguilla japonica. The life history of this species was later studied by Nakai (1927) and a description of its internal anatomy and effects upon the host was published by Matsui and Kumada (1928). Wilson (1928) reported a new species, L. composita, from Malapterurus electricus from the Nile. The first species reported from the United States was L. cruciata, described by Le Sueur in 1824 from Lake Erie. Kr0yer in 1863 described L. catostomi and L. pomotidis from the Mississippi River. Kellicott in 1881 added L. tortua from New York and L. pectoralis from Michigan. Wilson (1916) described two species, L. tenuis and L. variabilis from Fairport, Iowa; he also reported the occurrence of L. pomotidis and L. tortua at Fairport, Iowa, and listed L. cruciata from Fairport, Iowa, Scott, Arkansas, and Black Creek, North Carolina. Two new species, L. anolmala from North Carolina and L. dolabrodes from Wisconsin, were added by Wilson (1918). He later (1920) proposed the name L. insolens for L. anomala, preoccupied. In a brief preliminary paper, Enders and Rifenburgh (1928) reported an unnamed species of Lernaea parasitic in goldfish from Indiana. In addition to the species cited, several others have been recorded, particularly by early