Abstract
Next‐generation sequencing methods are increasingly used to identify eukaryotic, unicellular and multicellular symbiont communities within hosts. In this study, we analyzed the non-specific reads obtained during a metabarcoding survey of the bacterial communities associated to three different tissues collected from 13 wild Mediterranean teleost fish species. In total, 30 eukaryotic genera were identified as putative parasites of teleosts, associated to skin mucus, gills mucus and intestine: 2 ascomycetes, 4 arthropods, 2 cnidarians, 7 nematodes, 10 platyhelminthes, 4 apicomplexans, 1 ciliate as well as one order in dinoflagellates (Syndiniales). These results highlighted that (1) the metabarcoding approach was able to uncover a large spectrum of symbiotic organisms associated to the fish species studied, (2) symbionts not yet identified in several teleost species were putatively present, (3) the parasitic diversity differed markedly across host species and (4) in most cases, the distribution of known parasitic genera within tissues is in accordance with the literature. The current work illustrates the large insights that can be gained by making maximum use of data from a metabarcoding approach.
Highlights
Parasites are extremely diverse and omnipresent in all environments, making this lifestyle one of the most successful on Earth [1]
We further investigated the identity of these eukaryotic sequences associated with skin mucus, gill mucus and intestine of several teleost fish species from the Bay of Banyuls-sur-Mer (Gulf of Lion, northwest Mediterranean, France)
As this study focuses on parasitic communities of teleost fish species, sequences belonging to non-parasitic organisms were removed from the analysis
Summary
Parasites are extremely diverse and omnipresent in all environments, making this lifestyle one of the most successful on Earth [1]. Parasites are usually classified as ectoparasites or endoparasites, with or without direct contact with the external environment respectively [2]. Parasites differ in their life cycle: some parasites require only one host to complete their life cycle (direct life cycle) while others need intermediate hosts (indirect life cycle), in which they change their morphology and biology Fish are well known to be parasitized by many eukaryotic organisms, unicellular or multicellular [3,4,5,6].
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