Metazoan parasite communities of the Pacific red snapper,Lutjanus peru(Perciformes: Lutjanidae): interannual variations in parasite communities

Abstract

Metazoan parasite communities can experience temporal structural changes related to seasonal and/or local variations in several biotic and abiotic environmental factors. However, few studies have addressed this issue in tropical regions, where changes in water temperature are less extreme than in temperate regions, so the factors or processes that can generate variations in these parasite communities are as yet unclear. We quantified and analysed the parasite communities of 421 Lutjanus peru (Nichols & Murphy, 1922) collected from Acapulco Bay in Guerrero, Mexico, over a four-year period (August 2018 to April 2021), to identify any interannual variation due to local biotic and abiotic factors influenced by natural oceanographic phenomena, such as El Niño–Southern Oscillation, or La Niña. Twenty-five metazoan parasite taxa were recovered and identified: seven Digenea species; two Monogenea; one Cestoda; one Acanthocephala; four Nematoda; and ten of Crustacea (seven Copepoda and three Isopoda). The digeneans and copepods were the best represented parasite groups. The parasite communities were characterized by a high numerical dominance of helminth larvae. Species richness at the component community level (13 to 19 species) was similar to reported richness in other Lutjanus spp. The parasite communities of L. peru had a high variability in species composition, but low aggregate variability (e.g. species diversity), suggesting that structure of these communities may be quite stable over time. A clear interannual variation pattern was not observed, suggesting that parasite species of this host may respond differently to variations in environmental factors. Interannual variations were possibly caused by a combination of biotic (i.e. host feeding behaviour and body size) and local abiotic factors (influenced by climatic anomalies) which generated notable changes in the infection levels of several component species.

Factors determining community structure of metazoan parasites from brown-spotted grouper, Epinephelus chlorostigma (Valenciennes, 1828) in Southern Saudi Arabia

“…Digeneans parasite species numerically dominated the parasite community, representing 50.55% and the most diverse group of parasites followed by monogeneans represented 45.05% of the total individual parasites reported. This is in agreement with Villalba-Vasquez et al [45], Violante-Gonzalez et al [47], Violante-Gonzalez et al [48] and Villalba-Vasquez et al [46]. The overall mean species richness varies significantly by host size; large-sized fish have the highest mean species richness (3.77).…”

“…In tropical fish, several factors influence the structure of parasite communities, which are important components of the biodiversity of various ecosystems. Some of these factors may be related to the environment and/or to the host (e.g., feeding, behavior, physiology, sex) [4,31,46].…”

“…In the tropics, structural changes in parasite communities have always been associated with host traits such as age, body size, feeding behavior, host density, and vagility. These can promote high colonisation and exposure rates by new species of parasite and have been associated with parasite communities of high diversity and species richness [26,39,42,46,47].…”

“…In tropical regions conducted studies on temporal variation in fish populations [15,44,45,47] revealed that temporal variation in species richness and parasite community structure was affected by biotic and abiotic factors, such as water temperature and oxygen levels, availability of intermediate hosts, as well as human impacts. Even though, there is still little evidence that parasite communities vary over time [15,20,25,46].…”

“…Temporal structural changes that related to seasonal and/or local variations in several biotic and abiotic environmental factors can be experienced in metazoan parasite communities. Few studies have addressed this issue in tropical regions, where changes in water temperature are less extreme than in temperate regions, so the factors or processes that can generate variations in these parasite communities are as yet unclear [25,39,46].…”