<em>Pseudocrepidobothrium eirasi</em> (Rego and de Chambrier, 1995) gen. n. and comb. nov. (Cestoda, Proteocephalidea), parasite of a South American freshwater fish, and comparative cladistic analysis with <em>Crepidobothrium</em> spp.

Abstract

The morphology of Crepidobothrium eirasi Rego and de Chambrier, 1995 was revised and a cladistic analysis was performed on the six known species of Crepidobothrium Monticelli, 1900, namely, C. eirasi, C. Gerrardi (Baird, 1860), C. Viperis (Beddard, 1913), C. Dollfusi Freze, 1965, C. Garzoni de Chambrier, 1988 and C. Lachesidis (MacCallum, 1921), using 23 characters and one outgroup. This analysis yielded two parsimonious trees with 0.76 consistency index. Both trees concur in the position of C. Eirasi, and suggest that Crepidobothrium is monophyletic only when C. eirasi is excluded from the genus. The new genus Pseudocrepidobothrium has been built to allocate C. Eirasi, so that the monophyly of Crepidobothrium may be maintained. Pseudocrepidobothrium eirasi n. comb. is the only species from a fish with notched suckers, while all Crepidobothrium spp. are parasites of South American reptiles