TAXONOMIC AND ZOOGEOGRAPHICAL STUDIES OF DIGENETIC TREMATODES OF MARINE TELEOSTS FROM THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN SEA

A survey of digenetic trematodes from teleost fishes from the South Australian Sea is undertaken and the hypothesis that the marine digenean fauna of South Australia shares elements with other biogeographic relicts of the Tethyan Sea is examined. Nearly three hundred teleost fishes belonging to thirty-two families and forty-nine species were examined for parasites in the South Australian Sea (Spencer Gulf, Investigator Strait, Gulf St. Vincent, Backstairs Passage, and Encounter Bay), Australia, during December 1979/January 1980. The collection was supplemented with material collected in 1964 by Dr. Harold W. Manter near Adelaide, South Australia, and digeneans from the Australian Helminth Collection (housed in the South Australian Museum, Adelaide) from various locations in the South Australian Sea, collected during the period between 1918 and 1964. Sixty species of digenetic trematodes were collected from the forty-nine species of fishes, indicating a rich trematode fauna. Forty-one species were described as new, thirteen species being assigned to ten new genera, and one species displayed characters which called for the erection of a new family. Nineteen species were previously described species belonging to faunas in various parts of the globe. The plotting of the geographical distributions of the formerly described species, together with the newly described species of known genera, results in patterns which appear to link the Tropic American, Mediterranean-Atlantic, Indo-West Pacific, and South Australian-New Zealand faunas into a geographic pattern which coincides with the distribution of the Tethyan Sea. The results of the survey support the hypothesis of a biogeographic low- or non-barrier ocean province, linking the extreme parts of the supercontinents Gondwana and Laurasia