Morphological, ultrastructure and molecular characterization of Unionicola chelata (Acari: Hydrachnida: Unionicolidae) isolated from Bellamya bengalensis, West Bengal, India

Abstract

Unionicola sp. is a parasitic aquatic mite known to infect freshwater aquatic organisms, especially the malacofauna species and few species of sponges. Unionicola chelata (Acari: Hydrachnida: Unionicolidae) generally infect the freshwater bivalves of the Genus Unio sp. They are usually facultative in nature and can be parasitic at any stage of their life cycle. They cause damage to the gills of the host which harms their normal respiration process. The present work portraits the morphological characters, morphometric details, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images and sequence data of its mitochondrial gene "Cytochrome Oxidase I (COI)" and its taxonomic position was justi ed by obtaining a phylogenetic tree. The description regarding its morphological, morphometric characters and sequence studies has been presented here. This paper holds the report of a parasitic aquatic mite Unionicola chelata for the rst time from a Gastropod molluscan host Bellamya bengalensis (Lamarck,