Occurrence and molecular identification of Anisakis spp. from the North African coasts of Mediterranean Sea

Abstract

Larval forms of the genus Anisakis were reported infecting several fish species from the North African coasts of central Mediterranean Sea. Polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) analysis was used to investigate the occurrence of larval forms of different Anisakis species in teleost fishes and squid from North African coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and to establish the geographical and host range of these parasites in this area. A total of 282 Anisakis larvae were identified by PCR-RFLP from 13 teleost fish species and one cephalopod species captured at different sites off the Algerian, Tunisian and Libyan coasts. The type I larvae were found with a frequency of 93.62% and were identified as belonging to the following species: Anisakis simplex s.str., Anisakis pegreffii, A. simplex s.str/A. pegreffii hybrids and Anisakis typica. The type II larvae were found to belong to Anisakis physeteris, with the frequency of 6.38%. The record of A. simplex s.str/A. pegreffii hybrids, previously recorded from the Spanish and Portuguese Atlantic coasts and the Alboran Sea, extends their geographic distribution to the Tunisian coasts. The occurrence of A. simplex s.str. and hybrids away from their known area of distribution may predict the successful use of Anisakis larvae for tagging Scomber scombrus fish stocks for fisheries management purposes. Moreover, the results reported provide valuable information regarding the diversity of Anisakis species in the study area, indicating that several Anisakis sibling and morphospecies coexist in the North African coasts of the Mediterranean Sea.

Helminth parasites of the Atlantic chub mackerel, Scomber colias Gmelin, 1789 from Canary Islands, Central North Atlantic, with comments on their relations with other Atlantic regions

“…between regions. From the three species identified by molecular markers in the present work, Anisakis pegreffii is common throughout the Mediterranean, having been found at Madeira (Pontes et al 2005), Morocco and Mauritania (Mattiucci et al 1997;Farjallah et al 2008), extending its distribution to the southern Atlantic (Mattiucci and Nascetti 2008). This anisakid together with A. typica, also found in the present work, are parasites of dolphins, confined to surface waters and from 35°N to the austral region (see Mattiucci et al 1997).…”

Red vent syndrome in wild Atlantic salmon Salmo salar in Scotland is associated with Anisakis simplex sensu stricto (Nematoda: Anisakidae)

“…The heterogeneity was observed at those sites diagnostic for each species. The heterogeneity was only observed in areas where sympatric coexistence occurred (Abollo et al 2003, Farjallah et al 2007). ITS sequences from anisakids isolated from Baltic Sea herring had a T at position 173, whereas other A. simplex s.s. possessed a C. These herring anisakids could represent the second 'variant' in a hybrid situation; however, they did not display the corresponding polymorphic nucleotides at the other positions observed in anisakids from RVS salmon.…”

Anisakis (Nematoda: Ascaridoidea) from Indonesia

“…The larvae have been found in scombrids and carangids such as Auxis thazard thazard and Thunnus thynnus from Brazil (SW Atlantic); Scomber japonicus and Trachurus picturatus from the NE Atlantic off Madeira; Euthynnus affinis, Scomberomorus commerson, Sarda orientalis and C. hippurus from the west Indian Ocean off Somalia; and from Merluccius merluccius from the eastern Mediterranean Sea . Further records were provided by Mattiucci et al (2005) from Florida, Farjallah et al (2008) from the Mediterranean coast of North Africa (Scomber scombrus, M. merluccius, Phycis phycis), from Australia by Cannon (1977) and more recently by Shamsi (2007Shamsi ( , 2014 and Jabbar et al (2012) from the Great Barrier Reef, and by Chen & Shih (2015) from Taiwan. Kuhn et al (2013) have already summarized the worldwide known hosts for genetically confirmed worms, naming 26 different teleost species.…”

“…typica, the most common species in tropical fishes, has been identified from the southwest Atlantic (Brazil; Nadler et al 2005), west (Florida; Mattiucci et al 2005) and east Atlantic (Madeira, Portugal; Pontes et al 2005), the Mediterranean (North Africa; Farjallah et al 2008), the central Pacific (Hawaii and Moorea; Kuhn et al 2013, Palm & Bray 2014, and most recently from free-living Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins Tursiops aduncus off the Hurghada coastline in the northern Red Sea, Egypt (Kleinertz et al 2014b). Shamsi (2014) summarized the knowledge about Australian Anisakis spp., and identified the species A. brevispiculata, A.…”