Development of a PCR‐RFLP method for differential identification of Microcotyle sebastis and Microcotyle caudata isolated from cultured rockfish in Korea

Abstract

The genus Microcotyle (Van Beneden & Hesse, 1863) belongs to the polyopisthocotylean monogeneans, which are gill parasites of marine fishes, mainly the perciformes (Ayadi et al., 2017). Infected host fish exhibit anaemia and dyspnoea with considerable mortality but may remain in a state of chronic infections (Kim et al., 2001;Sanz, 1992). The genus Microcotyle is the largest genus in the family Microcotylidae, currently having 69 valid species listed in the WoRMS website; however, it remains a difficult genus for classification (Bouguerche et al., 2019a(Bouguerche et al., ,2019bWoRMS, 2021). Recently, molecular tools have been applied to the Microcotyle taxonomy and several new Microcotyle species have been described by morphological re-examination and molecular analyses (Ayadi et al., 2017;