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short scientific article	DOI 10.19233/ASHN.2017.04
received: 2017-05-04
FIRST RECORD OF CONCHODERMA AURITUM (CIRRIPEDIA: LEPADIDAE) ON ZIPHIUS CAVIROSTRIS (CETACEA: ZIPHIIDAE) IN GREECE
Ilias FOSKOLOS
Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute, Terpsichoris 21, 16671 Vouliagmeni, Greece E-mail: lifosk@hotmail.com
Myrto TOURGELI PROVATA
Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute, Terpsichoris 21, 16671 Vouliagmeni, Greece
Alexandros FRANTZIS
Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute, Terpsichoris 21, 16671 Vouliagmeni, Greece
abstract
The carcass of an adult, male, Cuvier's beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris, Ziphiidae) was found floating close to the coasts of Corfu Island, Greece, in July 2016. Many tens of copepods of the genus Pennella had infested the whale. Barnacles identified as Conchoderma auritum (Cirripedia, Lepadidae) and green algae were attached to the base of both teeth. We took standard measurements of the barnacles and found a mean capitulum length of 12.88 mm (sd = 6.26 mm, n = 13). Although this barnacle has been reported on several marine mammals and has a cosmopolitan distribution, this is the first report of the species in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
Key words: rabbit-ear barnacle, parasite, Pennella, Cuvier's beaked whale, cetacean, Mediterranean
primo ritrovamento di conchoderma auritum (cirripedia: lepadidae) su ziphius cavirostris (cetacea: ziphiidae) in grecia
SINTESI
La carcassa di un maschio adulto di zifio (Ziphius cavirostris, Ziphiidae) è stata trovata galleggiante vicino alle coste dell'isola greca di Corfù ne! luglio 2016. Decine di copepodi del genere Pennella avevano infestato la balena. Cirripedi identificad come Conchoderma auritum (Cirripedia, Lepadidae) e alghe verdi sono stati trovati fissati alla base di entrambi i denti. Gli autori hanno preso le misure standard dei cirripedi e stabilito una lunghezza, media del capitulum pari a 12,88 mm (sd = 6,26 mm, n = 13). Anche se questa specie di cirripedi è già stata trovata su diversi mammiferi marini e ha una distribuzione cosmopolita, questa è il primo ritrovamento della specie nel Mediterraneo orientale.
Parole chiave: cirripedi, parassiti, Pennella, zifio, cetacei, Mediterraneo
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INTRODUCTION
Several species of cetaceans are known to host sessile and stalked barnacles (Crustacea: Cirripedia) (Fertl & Newman, 2008). Stalked barnacles of the genus Conchoderma can be considered generalists, since they occur on both living organisms and inanimate objects, such as ship hulls (Davidson et al., 2009). Species of this genus have a highly reduced shell plate armature, which is correlated with an epibiotic mode of life (Anderson, 1993). The rabbit-ear barnacle Conchoderma auritum (Linnaeus, 1767) is one of the twenty living species of barnacles that use marine mammals as hosts (Newman & Ross, 1976). It is known to settle on slowly moving marine mammals (Aznar et al., 2005) and requires hard surfaces for attachment (Clarke, 1966). It can be found attached on exposed and unprotected teeth or even on malformed parts of the jaw (such as a bone injury) (Clarke, 1966; Elorriaga-Verplancken et al., 2015). It is considered as epizoic and commensal since it is hitchhiking on whales (Ralls & Mesnick, 2008).
Worldwide, C. auritum has been recorded on the teeth of seventeen toothed whales (e.g., Clarke, 1966; Mignucci-Giannoni et al., 1998; Elorriaga-Verplancken et al., 2015). It has also been found, less frequently, on damaged baleen plates in four mysticete species (Clarke, 1966; Olafsdottir & Shinn, 2013).
The Cuvier's beaked whale Ziphius cavirostris Cu-vier, 1823 is characterized by a nearly cosmopolitan distribution, avoiding only high latitudes and polar waters (Heyning, 1989). It is the only ziphiid species that regularly occurs throughout the Mediterranean Sea
(Podesta et al., 2016), with a local population likely small and isolated from that of the Atlantic (Dalebout et al., 2005). From 1990 until the date of the stranding reported herein, at least 126 Cuvier's beaked whale strandings had been recorded along the Greek coasts (Frantzis, 2009; Frantzis, unpublished data).
In this short note, we report the first record of C. auritum in the Eastern Mediterranean basin.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
On 12 July 2016, a carcass of a Cuvier's beaked whale was found floating close to the coast of Santa Barbara beach (Fig. 1), SW Corfu Island, Greece (39°24'42''N, 019°59'14''E). Several photographs were taken (Fig. 2), but no necropsy was conducted. Green algae (Chlorophyta) and barnacles that were found attached to the base of both teeth (Fig. 3a) were collected, preserved in 70% ethanol for further analysis and deposited at the Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute in Athens, Greece.
We identified all the barnacles collected from both teeth following Darwin (1852, p. 141, pl. III, fig. 4). Apart from the order level (Buckeridge & Newman, 2006), the classification of the barnacles followed Martin and Davis' (2001) scheme to family level. We also took the following measurements to the nearest 0.01 mm with a digital Vernier caliper: capitulum length (CL), total length (TL, without "ears") and scutum maximal length and width (SL & SW, respectively). Specifically for SL and SW, we measured these without removing the scutum.
Fig. 1: Map of the Mediterranean Sea and Corfu Island (magnification) showing the stranding position in Santa Barbara Beach (red dot). The 1000 m contour appears as a blue line in both maps.
Sl. 1: Zemljevid Sredozemskega morja in otoka Krfa (povečano) z označeno lokaliteto, kjer je naplavilo kita na plaži Sv. Barbare (rdeča pika). Kontura, ki označuje 1000 m, je označena z modro črto.
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RESULTS
The stranded whale was a recently dead male with erupted teeth (Fig. 3a) and a total length of 5.15 m. Based on several of the available photographs, it seemed emaciated, although no definitive conclusion can be drawn as the photographs were taken while the whale was in the water.
Many Pennella sp. copepods had infested the whale. At least one hundred of them were counted on the available photographs, which only showed the right side of the whale's body. These copepods were spread all over the head, body and tail-stock (Fig. 2).
The barnacles were in two large clusters attached to both teeth. All ten barnacles found on the right tooth and three out of six from the left tooth were collected.
The species was readily identified as the rabbit-ear barnacle Conchoderma auritum by the obvious ear-like appendages (tubes) on the capitulum, and the small bilobed scutum (Darwin, 1852; Fig. 3b & 3c). The chlorophytes were not identified to species level. The barnacle species' classification is the following:
Phylum ARTHROPODA
Infraclass CIRRIPEDIA Burmeister, 1834
Order LEPADIFORMES Buckeridge & Newman, 2006
Family LEPADIDAE Darwin, 1852
Genus Conchoderma von Olfers, 1814
Conchoderma auritum (Linnaeus, 1767)
The mean (x), standard deviation (s), minimum and maximum (min-max) values (in mm) of CL, TL, SL and SW for all sampled barnacles (n=13) were, respectively:
CL: x = 12.88, s = 6.26, min-max = 2.04-25.08 TL: x = 13.92, s = 6.90, min-max = 4.17-50.40 SL: x = 4.39, s = 1.83, min-max = 1.28-7.45 SW: x = 1.96, s = 0.85, min-max = 0.51-3.40
DISCUSSION
Today, the barnacle genus Conchoderma is represented by three living species according to Chan et al., (2009). Conchoderma virgatum Spengler, 1789 and C. auritum are present in the Mediterranean Sea (Koukouras & Matsa, 1998). The rabbit-ear barnacle C. auritum had only been reported from the western Mediterranean basin (Koukouras & Matsa, 1998) before our observation, and it is somewhat surprising that no other reports were available for the eastern Mediterranean basin, since the species has a cosmopolitan distribution (Chan et al., 2009). Throughout the cetacean fauna of the Mediterranean Sea, it was reported to have been found on a Cuvier's beaked whale stranded in Algiers (Monod, 1938 in Clarke, 1966) and on the left mandible of a striped dolphin Stenella coeruleoalba (Meyen, 1833) that stranded in Sicily (Sampieri) in 1991 (Insacco et al.,
Fig. 2: Body parts of the Cuvier's beaked whale stranded in Santa Barbara Beach, Corfu Island, Greece, on 12 July 2016. More than 35 specimens of the parasitic copepod Pennella balaenoptera are visible in the photograph of the head area.
Sl. 2: Telesni deli Cuvierjevega kljunatega kita, ki ga je naplavilo na plaži Sv. Barbare na Krfu 12 julija 2016. Več kot 35 primerkov zajedalskega raka ceponožca Pennella balaenoptera je vidno na fotografiji glave.
2014; G. Insacco, personal communication, 2016). The latter, recorded at the Strait of Sicily, was the easternmost record of the species in the Mediterranean Sea.
The barnacles we found on the teeth of the stranded whale were in two clusters, one on each tooth. The presence of the rabbit-ear barnacle in clusters is probably facilitating cross-fertilization, since this species is hermaphrodite (Ruppert et al., 2004). According to Ras-mussen (1980), the rabbit-ear barnacle reaches sexual maturity at a scutum length of 7 mm. If these growth measurements taken at sea water temperatures of 16 - 19 °C were also valid for the hotter Eastern Mediterranean basin, only one of the specimens we sampled was sexually mature. Similarly, all barnacles would have been attached on the whale for much less than 150 days, according to the same author.
There are only three known records of rabbit-ear barnacles on Cuvier's beaked whales: from the Galápagos Islands (Palacios et al., 1994), the Caribbean (Mignucci-Giannoni et al., 1998), and the western Mediterranean basin (Monod, 1938 in Clarke, 1966), with the first record considered doubtful by the authors. In the first two cases, as in the current study, the whale was a male with a total length exceeding 5 m, and the barnacles were only attached to its teeth.
Apart from the rabbit-ear barnacles that we found on the whale, there was a large number of parasitic copepods spread along the body. They were determined as Pennella balaenoptera Koren & Danielssen, 1817, since this is the only species of the genus that uses marine
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Fig. 3: a) Close view of the whale's jaws with the rabbit-ear barnacles Conchoderma auritum and green algae attached to the teeth; b) and c) upper part of a rabbit-ear barnacle specimen. Scale bar = 0.5 cm. Sl. 3: a) Bližinski posnetek kitove čeljusti z raki vitičnjaki Conchoderma auritum in zelenimi algami, pritrjenimi na zobeh; b) in c) zgornji del raka vitičnjaka. Merilo = 0,5 cm.
mammals as hosts (Hogans, 1987). The heavy infestation by parasitic copepods in this case might not have been independent from the presence of the rabbit-ear barnacle. However, no physical connection between the two parasites could be observed from the available
photographs, as in other reported cases of fish infestation by Pennella sp. and Conchoderma sp. (e.g., Pradeep et al., 2016). Infestation of cetaceans by P. balaenoptera can be a signal of an extended period of weakness (Aznar et al., 2005), while a heavy infestation can cause substantial depletion of lymphoid tissue, resulting in ineffective immune responses (Cornaglia et al., 2000). Moreover, an extensive epizootic crustacean infestation might be associated with the immunosuppressive effects of a viral infection (cetacean morbillivirus, CeMV) and abnormally heavy loads of polychlorinated biphenyls (Aznar et al., 2005). Although CeMV is rarely reported in Cuvier's beaked whales (Jacob et al., 2016), parasitosis of P. balaenoptera can be seen as an indicator of cetacean health (Vecchione & Aznar, 2014).
The available evidence suggests that the Cuvier's beaked whale studied here was probably weakened and unable to feed. The infestation with the copepods and the settlement of the barnacles was likely the result of the whale's gradual debilitation that eventually led to its death.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors thank Hercules, Marilena and Theofanis Dimitriadis for sending the whale's photographs and the samples of barnacles and algae. They are also grateful to Asst. Prof. Teresa Paula Gongalves Cruz (Department of Biology, University of Evora, Portugal) for her advice on barnacle measurements. Ultimately, they thank Miss Heather Margaret Vance for her helpful comments to improve the manuscript.
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prvi zapis o pojavljanju raka vitičnjaka vrste conchoderma auritum (cirripedia: lepadidae) na cuvierjevem kljunatem kitu ziphius cavirostris
(cetacea: ziphiidae) v grčiji
Ilias FOSKOLOS
Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute, Terpsichoris 21, 16671 Vouliagmeni, Greece E-mail: lifosk@hotmail.com
Myrto TOURGELI PROVATA
Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute, Terpsichoris 21, 16671 Vouliagmeni, Greece
Alexandros FRANTZIS
Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute, Terpsichoris 21, 16671 Vouliagmeni, Greece
POVZETEK
Truplo odraslega samca Cuvierjevega kljunatega kita (Ziphius cavirostris, Ziphiidae) je julija 2016 naplavilo blizu obale otoka Krfa (Grčija). Na kitu se je zaredilo nekaj deset ceponožcev iz rodu Pennella, medtem ko so bili na bazi zob pritrjeni raki vitičnjaki Conchoderma auritum (Cirripedia, Lepadidae) in zelene alge. Avtorji so opravili standardne meritve na rakih vitičnjakih in izmerili povprečno dolžino glavičastega dela (capitulum), ki je meril 12,88 mm (sd = 6,26 mm, n = 13). Čeprav so o tem raku vitičnjaku že poročali, da je bil najden na mnogih morskih sesalcih in je tudi sicer kozmopolit, gre za prvi zapis o pojavljanju te vrste v vzhodnem Sredozemskem morju.
Ključne besede: rak vitičnjak, zajedalec, Pennella, Cuvierjev kljunati kit, kiti, Sredozemsko morje
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