sp. n. (Monogenea: Gyrodactylidae) from (Smith, 1846) (Mugilidae) from Table Bay, South Africa.

sp. n. is described from the body surface and fins of the South African mullet, (Smith, 1846) collected from Table Bay Harbour, Cape Town and is compared to five other species described from grey mullets globally namely Ling, 1963 and Zhukov, 1970 from (Temminck and Schlegel, 1845); Rawson, 1973 from L. Conroy and Conroy, 1985 from Valenciennes, 1836 and Zang,Yang and Liu, 2001 from (Smith, 1846). Morphologically, sp. n. has prominent ventral bar processes that near cover the hamulus roots, marginal sickles with large rhomboid heels, slender shafts and fine points that extend beyond the sickle toes. sp. n. can, however, be readily differentiated: and have ventral bars with small ventral processes; has marginal hooks sickles with slender shafts and proportionately short points and open-faced blades; possesses marginal hook sickles with deep, rounded heels, forward slanting shafts and an angular, square line to the inner face of the blades. Although the length of the marginal hooks of are similar to sp. n., their hamuli are double the size. A GenBank BlastN search with the 931 bp sequence covering ITS1, 5.8S and ITS2 gave no close hits; the nearest species for which sequences are available is Ogawa and Egusa, 1978 (identity 96.56%, 899/931 bp). The proposal of sp. n. as a new species, therefore, is well supported by both the molecular and morphological analyses presented herein. This species is the first to be described from and only the second species to be described from the marine environment off the African continent.