Abstract
The aim of this study was to investigate the parasites fauna of Ancistrus leucostictus, Hypostomus ventromaculatus, Ancistrus sp. and Hemiancistrus sp. from the Igarapé Fortaleza River (Amapá State, Brazil), besides making a checklist of the parasite species in Loricariidae from Brazil. A total of 53 fishes were collected from November 2013 to August 2014. In the hosts, a total of 1,559 parasites of seven taxa were collected: Unilatus unilatus, Trinigyrus mourei, undetermined metacercariae, Genarchella gernachella, Raphidascaris (Sprentascaris) sp., Gorythocephalus elongorchis and Proteocephalus sp. Ectoparasite species were frequent in the examined Loricariidae species, which also had larval stages of endoparasites. The hosts with the highest sampled number, H. ventromaculatus and Ancistrus sp., had the highest parasite species richness. Loricariidae species from Brazil are parasitized by species of Protozoa, Monogenea, Nematoda, Digenea, Acantocephala, Cestoda, Crustacea and Hirudinea, but monogeneans, digeneans and nematodes were the predominant taxa.
Highlights
Loricariidae is the most species-rich of freshwater fishes, with more than 915 valid species, distributed in 106 genera and six subfamilies (Lithogeneinae, Neoplecostominae, Ancistrinae, Hypoptopomatinae, Hypostominae and Loricariinae) and occurs in Costa Rica, Panama andSouth America (Alonso, Terán, Aguilera, &Mirande, 2016; Nelson, Grande, & Wilson, 2016).the highest occurrence of Loricariidae species is in the Amazon River basin system (Soares et al, 2011)
A total of 1,559 parasites were collected from 53 fish specimens, which infected gills and gut of hosts
Hypostomus ventromaculatus harbored the highest diversity of parasites, followed by Ancistrus sp. (Table 3)
Summary
The highest occurrence of Loricariidae species is in the Amazon River basin system (Soares et al, 2011). Fish species of this family have size ranging from 2.5 to 61.0 cm and detritivorus feeding habit, since they feed on debris, algae and invertebrates associated with the sediments of water bodies (Soares et al, 2011). Loricariid species are fish that occupy a lower position in the food chain (Soares et al, 2011), they have a low parasitic fauna (Gonçalves, Oliveira, Santos, & Tavares-Dias, 2014).
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