Hemichromis, Peters, 1857

Jorissen, Michiel W. P., Pariselle, Antoine, Huyse, Tine, Vreven, Emmanuel J., Snoeks, Jos, Decru, Eva, Kusters, Thomas, Lunkayilakio, Soleil Wamuini, Bukinga, Fidel Muterezi, Artois, Tom & Vanhove, Maarten P. M., 2018, Six new dactylogyrid species (Platyhelminthes, Monogenea) from the gills of cichlids (Teleostei, Cichliformes) from the Lower Congo Basin, Parasite (Paris, France) 25 (64), pp. 1-21 : 18

Parasites of Hemichromis

The collected representatives of Hemichromis are the native H. elongatus and H. stellifer [10]. On these hosts, we have discovered three new species that are morphologically similar to already described ones: O. ximenae n. sp., which resembles O. voltensis ; C. calycinus n. sp., which resembles C. teugelsi and C. polyenso n. sp., which resembles C. euzeti [35]. Furthermore, we can assume from the literature that C. euzeti is sympatric (occurs on the same individual host) with C. longicirrus in Benin, Cameroon and ROC, though not explicitly stated [6, 22, 34], while in Lower Congo, C. longicirrus is sympatric with C. polyenso n. sp. Similarly, O. voltensis and O. aframae are presumably sympatric in Benin, Cameroon, Senegal, Gambia, Mali and Ivory Coast [6, 26, 34], while in Lower Congo O. aframae is sympatric with O. ximenae n. sp. As shown, there are similarities between the parasite faunas of Hemichromis spp. throughout different ecoregions. However, parasites of Hemichromis spp. remain unexplored for large portions of Africa; thus, it is too early to draw conclusions about their biogeography and diversity. Nonetheless, it can be hypothesized that compared with the species discovered in Lower Congo, more morphologically similar species exist in other freshwater ecoregions on other representatives of Hemichromis . Cichlidogyrus kmentovae n. sp. was only found on H. stellifer , but our sample size is too small to verify whether it does not infect H. elongatus as well. Cichlidogyrus falcifer occurs on H. fasciatus [35] as well as on H. elongatus and thus is an intermediate specialist (a parasite occurring on more than one host from the same genus, see [21]).