Helminth parasites in freshwater fish from the Papaloapan river basin, Mexico

Abstract

A checklist based on previously published records and original data is presented for the helminth parasites reported in 35 fish species from nine families from the Rio Papaloapan basin, east Mexico. The checklist contains 85 taxa from 39 helminth families. Trematodes and nematodes were the most abundant taxonomic groups. The helminth fauna in the fish of the Papaloapan River basin predominantly consists of Neotropical species that are largely autogenic. The introduced species Centrocestus formosanus was the most widely distributed helminth, infecting 16 host species. Ten of the recorded helminth species have only been found in fish from the Papaloapan. This inventory contributes 157 new host records, and reports the presence of 30 helminth species in the Papaloapan for the first time . This inventory shows the richness of helminth parasite species in the fish of the Papaloapan River basin in comparison with the other hydrological basins in Mexico. It also demonstrates that this fauna is typically Neotropical and quite similar to that from the neighboring basins of the Grijalva-Usumacinta system and the Yucatan Peninsula. The data also suggest highly effective transmission between environments within the same basin and that the regional parasite fauna is strongly influenced by fish community composition.

Helminth parasites of freshwater fish in Chiapas, Mexico

“…This occurs because each fish family has a set of associated helminth species, which are distributed together with this family (Salgado-Maldonado et al 2005a;Salgado-Maldonado 2006, 2008. In this way, a helminth fauna's composition is linked more closely to ichthyological composition than the limnology of bodies of water (Dogiel 1961;Wootten 1973).…”

Metacercariae of Centrocestus formosanus in goldfish (Carassius auratus L.) imported into Croatia

“…The cycle is completed when a fish infected with metacercariae is eaten by a definitive host, piscivorous birds or fish-eating mammals, in whose digestive tract the adult trematode develops (Premvati & Pande, 1974;Paperna, 1996;Scholz & Salgado-Maldonado, 2000;Scholz et al, 2001;Hernández et al, 2003;Mitchell et al, 2005). The parasite has been found in the gills of many fish species from numerous Asian countries (Yanohara & Kagei, 1983;Madhavi, 1986), United States (Mitchell et al, 2000) and other parts of the world (Vélez- Hernández et al, 1998;Hernández et al, 2003;Salgado-Maldonado et al, 2005). In Turkey, Yildiz (2005) first recovered the metacercariae of C. formosanus from the gills of ornamental fish imported from Singapore.…”

Centrocestus formosanus (Digenea: Heterophyidae) Encysted in the Freshwater Fish, Puntius brevis, from Lao PDR

“…The present study adds P. brevis as a new second intermediate host of C. formosanus. The metacercariae are encysted mostly in the gills of fish [1,7], but in heavily infected fish a small number of metacercariae may also be present under the scale of muscle [1]. As the gills are generally discarded during cooking fishes, infected people may be few in number.…”