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Abstract
Abstract: The Acrothoracican and Rhizocephalan Barnacles of Florida and Surrounding Waters
Norman E. Weisbord (1)
ABSTRACT
As of the present there have been reported 4 species of burrowing barnacles (Acrothoracica) and 25 species of parasitic barnacles (Rhizocephala)in Florida and in the waters surrounding it. By surrounding waters is meant the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and the Western Atlantic Ocean. The geographic position of the State of Florida is unique in that it borders upon and extends into each of these major bodies of water; and since these waters commingle and affect each other in important respects today as well as during late Cenozoic time, Florida partakes geologically and faunally of temperate, semi-tropical, and tropical marine conditions. Thus many of the barnacles found in Florida have been reported also in latitudes well to the north and south. Conversely, it is anticipated, because of the hosts they occupy, that some of the burrowing or parasitic Cirripedia not yet reported in Florida but which occur elsewhere in the Gulf, Caribbean, or Western Atlantic, will be discovered eventually in the Floridan province.
By tabulating and listing these little-known barnacles and the hosts with which they are associated, this paper is in effect a dated inventory of two particular orders of organisms within the class Cirripedia. The report is preliminary to a more comprehensive account to be published later this year.
LIST OF SPECIES
The species of Acrothoracica and Rhizocephala reported from Florida and the waters around it are listed below. Opposite each species of rhizocephalan is the decapod host on which it is parasitic, and also the known latitudinal range of the host.
Tabulated data; refer to PDF file.
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Tabulated data (continued from page 316).
REMARKS
Fossilized remains of the Acrothoracica and Rhizocephala themselves are extremely rare because of their soft bodies. However, each species of acrothoracican encases its body in a distinctive burrow which it excavates within a suitable substrate such as the shell of mollusks or the skeleton of corals. Such burrows are often preserved in the host, and have been recognized in the Mio-Pliocene and Pleistocene of Florida.
A somewhat similar but more indirect method of inferring the pre-Holocene existence of Rhizocephala is through the fossilization of the host crab, for example the crab Callinectes sapidus Rathbun which has been identified in the upper Miocene of Virginia and in the Pleistocene Talbot Formation of Maryland. The rhizocephalan Loxothylacus texanus Boschma infests Callinectes sapidus in the present, and it may be conjectured that the same parasite infested the same host in the past.
The adverse economic impact to man caused by rhizocephalan parasites is considerable. Shortly after attachment, the barnacles punctures the stomach of its host crab and is then nourished by the contents to become an inflated sac. This form of parasitism is accompanied, for reasons not yet fully understood, by the degeneration of the reproductive organs in both sexes, leading to sterility of the infested crabs. The edible blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) of Gulf and Atlantic waters are often infested with the barnacle parasite Loxothylacus texanus, thus diminishing the ultimate catch of this important food source. A similar infestation of the edible king crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus) takes place in Alaskan waters by the barnacle parasite Briarosaccus callosus, and it has been determined that 70 per cent of the king crabs collected in a randomly selected region off the Alaskan coast have been so affected.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND ASSOCIATED FOOTNOTES
(1) Department of Geology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306.
Copyright © 1999 by The Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies