''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 flagellum, eukaryotic flagella, but are in general shorter and present in much larger numbers, with a ...

s. It is a parasite of the

cuttlefish Cuttlefish, or cuttles, are Marine (ocean), marine Mollusca, molluscs of the order (biology), suborder Sepiina. They belong to the class (biology), class Cephalopoda which also includes squid, octopuses, and nautiluses. Cuttlefish have a unique ...

Sepia elegans ''Sepia elegans'', the elegant cuttlefish, is a species of cuttlefish in the family Sepiidae from the eastern Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. It is an important species for fisheries in some parts of the Mediterranean where its populati ...

''.

Taxonomy

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

Naples Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...

, 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 A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan Taxonomic rank, class Ceph ...

'' 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 ( ; abbr. MNHN) is the national natural history museum of France and a of higher education part of Sorbonne University. The main museum, with four galleries, is located in Paris, France, within the Ja ...

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