''Chromidina elegans'' is a species of parasitic

ciliate The ciliates are a group of alveolates characterized by the presence of hair-like organelles called cilia, which are identical in structure to eukaryotic flagella, but are in general shorter and present in much larger numbers, with a differen ...

s. It is a parasite of the

cuttlefish Cuttlefish or cuttles are marine molluscs of the order Sepiida. They belong to the class Cephalopoda which also includes squid, octopuses, and nautiluses. Cuttlefish have a unique internal shell, the cuttlebone, which is used for control ...

'' Sepia elegans''.

Taxonomy

''Chromidina elegans'' was first described from specimen collected from off

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

, Italy, by Foettinger in 1881, bearing the name ''Benedenia elegans''.Foettinger A. 1881. Recherches sur quelques Infusoires nouveaux parasites des Céphalopodes. Archives de Biologie, 2, 345-378. It was reassigned to the Genus ''

Chromidina ''Chromidina'' is a genus of apostome ciliates of the family Opalinopsidae. Species of ''Chromidina'' are parasitic in the renal and pancreatic appendages of cephalopods. In 2016, a molecular study found that the closest relatives of ''Chromid ...

'' by Gonder, in 1905. The species was first redescribed by Chatton & Lwoff in 1935.Chatton E, Lwoff A. 1935. Les Ciliés Apostomes. Morphologie, cytologie, éthologie, évolution, systématique. Première partie. Aperçu historique et général. Étude monographique des genres et des espèces. Archives de Zoologie Expérimentale et Générale, 77, 1-453. and again redescribed in 2016 based on material in the collections of the

Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History, known in French as the ' (abbreviation MNHN), is the national natural history museum of France and a ' of higher education part of Sorbonne Universities. The main museum, with four galleries, is loca ...

in Paris. In the 2016 description, a neohapantotype and paraneohapantotypes were designated the species.

References

Oligohymenophorea Ciliate species Protists described in 1881 Parasites of molluscs Parasitic alveolates {{ciliate-stub