110-million-years-old fossil suggests early parasitism in shrimps

Direct evidence of paleo-parasitism in crustaceans is very scarce. Epicaridean isopods are obligatory parasites of crustaceans, including decapods such as crabs, shrimps, and lobsters. Their interaction with hosts is known from fossils as far back as the Jurassic through deformations of the branchial cuticle on the hosts. Their small size and low fossilization potential, outside of those larvae that have been found in amber, makes understanding the group’s evolution challenging. Here, we report the oldest evidence of paleo-parasitism in marine shrimps and an imprint of a putative adult parasite that appears to be an epicaridean isopod. Our results suggest that the parasite–host interaction between epicaridean isopods and marine shrimps started at least 110 million years ago, and the Tethys Sea was a possible dispersal pathway for this lineage of parasites during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, as known for other marine organisms through most of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. The oldest fossil records of bopyrid swellings associated with a large number of decapods from the Jurassic in Europe suggest that the Tethys region was a center of epicaridean distribution as a whole. Recent parasitic isopods found on dendrobranchiate shrimps are restricted to the Indo-Pacific and may represent a relict group of a lineage of parasites more widely distributed in the Mesozoic.