Parasite communities of four fish species in the Wadden Sea and the role of fish discarded by the shrimp fisheries in parasite transmission

Abstract

Parasites were observed in medium-and small-sized fish taken from the discards of a commercial shrimper during seven different cruises in the tidal channels of the North Frisian Wadden Sea (S~deraue, North Sea) from April to September 1991. In total, 442 fish comprising four species (Sprattus sprattus, Hyperoplus lanceolatus, Ammodytes tobianus, Pomatoschistus minutus)were investigated. The parasite fauna consisted of 22 species. The parasite community structure of the 4 hosts was compared. The diet of the hosts seemed to be the main factor determining the structure of the parasite community. Other factors could not be assessed. Eight species of parasites occurred as larval stages. This indicated that fish were intermediate or paratenic hosts in their life cycle. The nematode Hysterothylacium sp, (Anisakidae) and the digenean Cryptocotyle lingua (Heterophyidea) were the dominant parasites, reaching their highest prevalence and density in sprat and sand eel. Sprat and sand eel play a very important role in parasite transmission to predacious fish and seabirds.

Seasonal variation in parasite infection patterns of marine fish species from the Northern Wadden Sea in relation to interannual temperature fluctuations

“…Our results as well as previous studies (Groenewold et al, 1996;Zander, 2005) show that parasitism is common in the analyzed four small fish species of the Wadden Sea. In total, we detected 16 different macroparasite species from six different phyla.…”

“…The diversity of the parasite communities from Atlantic herring, European sprat and lesser sand eel ranged from five to seven different parasite species and showed diversity indices in the range from 1.46 to 1.67, which is considerably higher than previously reported diversities from the German Wadden Sea of 0.95 for European sprat and 0.20 for lesser sand eel (Groenewold et al, 1996). In the past, many parasitological studies were exclusively based on morphological identification, but particularly nematodes or larval stages of parasites are difficult to identify at the species-level (Bhadury and Austen, 2010;Locke et al, 2010).…”

“…In the past, most parasitological studies in the Wadden Sea focussed on invertebrates (Lauckner, 1971;Thieltges, 2006;Thieltges et al, 2013) or on commercially important fish species like flatfishes or gadoids (Hilger et al, 1991;Moller and Anders, 1992). In contrast, macroparasite communities of small-sized fish were only rarely considered (Groenewold et al, 1996;Zander, 2005). Nevertheless, macroparasites often utilize small fish as intermediate host and these fishes play an important role in the food web of the Wadden Sea by transmitting parasite to predacious fish and seabirds (Kühl and Kuipers, 1983).…”

Gastrointestinal Helminth Parasites Community of Fish Species in a Niger Delta Tidal Creek, Nigeria

“…The very host specific is species of Capillaria, most oxyurids, and the philometrids Nilonema gymnarchi and Thwaitia bagri [3,5]. Globally, there is paucity of the literature on the helminth parasites of marine and estuarine fishes, with the following records available [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. The neglect of marine fish parasitology has been attributed to ignorance of the occurrence, distribution, and taxonomy of the parasites in fish [13].…”

The life cycle of Dichelyne (Cucullanellus) minutus (Nematoda: Cucullanidae)

“…In the Baltic Sea, off the Polish coast, Markowski (1935) found 1-2 specimens in 8 of 520 examined specimens of the sand goby Pomatoschistus minutus (Pallas) and Groenewold et al (1996) found one adult D. minutus among 194 specimens of P. minutus from the southeastern North Sea. In the Øresund it was found in Pomatoschistus microps only, a brackish goby mostly living at depth less than 10 m. It is replaced by P. minutus at deeper waters.…”