Lernanthropidae, Kabata, 1979

Boxshall, Geoff A., Bernot, James P., Barton, Diane P., Diggles, Ben K., Q-Y, Russell, Atkinson-Coyle, Toby & Hutson, Kate S., 2020, Parasitic copepods of the family Lernanthropidae Kabata, 1979 (Copepoda: Siphonostomatoida) from Australian fishes, with descriptions of seven new species, Zootaxa 4736 (1), pp. 1-103 : 7

Family Lernanthropidae

In the family Lernanthropidae characters relating to the gross body morphology of the adult female have proven valuable in the discrimination of both generic and species level taxa. At the generic level in particular, the general form of legs 1 to 4 provides important characters, as well as the presence and shape of the dorsal trunk plate(s) on the fourth pedigerous somite, and the form of the egg sacs in the adult female. Older descriptions tended to focus on gross morphology, so characters relating to the details of cephalosomic limbs are often not available. Fortunately, gross morphology is unusually informative in this family, even at the species level, so the taxonomy of lernanthropids is relatively robust. Although some species have been transferred to other genera, 148 of the 167 nominal species formally described in the family remain valid, with only 19 species (11 %) recognized as synonyms. Males of ten species are described here for the first time, including five previously unknown males and five from new species.