Gill parasites of fish from two estuaries in northeastern Brazil: new hosts and geographical records

Abstract

Parasites are important components of communities and constitute great part of the biological diversity found in ecosystems, providing valuable information about their hosts and the environment in which they live. However, despite its importance, parasitic diversity is still not well known in some regions of Brazil, especially with respect to fish parasites in the Northeast Region. The present study aims to perform the survey of gill parasites of fish from two tropical estuaries located in northeastern Brazil: Paraíba and Mamanguape rivers. Two collections were made in each estuary, one during the dry period (November / 2013) and the other during the rainy season (July / 2014). The fish were caught using a beach seine net, dragged along the main channel margin. After the identification, biometry and necropsy of the fish, their parasites were collected, stored and identified. For each species of parasite, the values of prevalence, mean intensity and mean abundance were calculated. Of the 882 examined fish, belonging to four species, 145 were parasitized by at least one species of parasite. In total, 18 taxa of parasites of the groups Monogenea, Digenea, Nematoda, Copepoda and Isopoda were recorded, being the copepod Acusicola brasiliensis the most abundant species of parasite.

Ectoparasites infecting Mugil curema (Mugiliformes: Mugilidae) in Amapá state estuary, in the northern Brazilian coast region

“…Mugil curema of the current study was infected by L. brasiliensis, a monogenean species originally described in Mugil liza Valenciennes, 1836 from the Guandu River, in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Abdallah 2009). In addition, the infection levels by L. brasiliensis were higher than that reported for this same host from the estuary of the State of Paraiba, which was infected by Ligophorus mugilinus (Hargis, 1955) (Golzio et al 2017). Falkenberg et al (2021) reported rst time the record of L. brasiliensis for M. curema.…”

“…Understanding how the parasites are distributed and their interactions with host sh populations and environment are among the basic aims of parasitology of sh (Cavalcanti 2011;Golzio et al 2017;Nedić et al 2018;Neves & Tavares-Dias 2019). In this context, parasite-host-environment systems constitute excellent study models to explore these essential aspects of parasitic ecology in wild sh populations.…”

“…One of these most important interactions is with different taxa of parasite species, which can result in diseases. Such diseases can be highly damaging for sh and consequently to the local economics (Cavalcanti et al 2011;Golzio et al 2017;Nedić et al 2018;Neves & Tavares-Dias 2019). Parasitic diseases usually occur when there is an imbalance between environment, host and parasite community in sh population (Pedro et al 2016;Mentz et al 2016).…”

“…Fish have a great importance for human populations, as well as for nutrition of animals with zootechnical interest. Fishing is one of the fundamental and effective ways to quickly nd food in nature, from the earliest times, in order to meet the existential needs, which is why it became one important branch of economics (Golzio et al 2017;Nedić et al 2018). Mugil curema (Valenciennes, 1836), named white mullet, a pelagic sh of the family Mugilidae in Americas that is distributed from Cape Cod (USA) to Brazil, has a great importance for shing.…”

The natural forage base of ponds and its influence on the development of ectoparasitic invasions in the fish farms of the Lviv region, Ukraine

“…The invasive fish diseases are widespread in water bodies of Ukraine and cause significant economic losses. They can manifest differently, in particular, pathological changes in the body can lead to death, latent disease, growth and development delay and decreased productivity of fish (Vovk, 2002;Rastiannasab et al, 2016;Golzio et al, 2017). One of the reasons hampering the development of fish farming and increasing fish productivity is ectoparasitic because of these fish diseases (Hemaprasanth et al, 2011;Loboiko, 2012;Benovics et al, 2017).…”