A rare discovery: a newspecies (Monocotylidae: Loimoinae) from the gills of(Carcharhinidae) off the southern Great Barrier Reef, Australia.

Abstract

A new species ofMacCallum, 1917 is described more than half a century after the last species was described in 1972. The new species was collected from the gills of(Ogilby, 1915) off the Central Queensland coast, Australia, and is the firstspecies and the first representative of the Loimoinae Price, 1936 known from Oceania. A detailed morphological description and 28S rDNA molecular sequences are provided for the new species. In the molecular phylogeny based on available 28S rDNA sequences for relevant Monocotylidae, the new species grouped together with the only othersequence available in GenBank, that of the nonugensp. from China (OM060238), sister toManter, 1944. The estimated genetic divergence between the new species and the nonugensp. sequence is low, between 0.0452 and 0.0737, suggesting that the nonugen sequence may represent the new species, or a very closely related congener. Host identity was confirmed by comparing COI sequences with those of known sharks in GenBank. We also provide the first 12S and 16S molecular sequences for this shark species.