Parasite Inspection in Five Commercially Important Oyster Species (Mollusca: Bivalvia) of Pakistan

Abstract

A total of five native oyster species namely; Crassostrea gryphoides, C. madrasensis, C. glomerata, Ostrea nomades and Saccostrea cucullata were collected from three sites: Buleji of Sindh coast; Hub and Jiwani of Balochistan coast, Pakistan. Parasitic inclusion was present only in histological sections of O. nomades and S. cucullata at Buleji. Individuals of O. nomades found to be infected with protozoan parasite Nematopsis species and Proctoeces sp. trematode parasite. Additionally, unknown parasitic cyst was observed at outer epithelium in a male gonadal section of S. cucullata. There is no previous record in literature of pathogens in oyster species at Buleji.

Age structure, carbonate production and shell loss rate in an Early Miocene reef of the giant oyster <i>Crassostrea gryphoides</i>

“…Although the type of Crassostrea gryphoides (von Schlotheim, 1813) was described from the mid-Miocene of Romania, the name is also used in biological literature for an extant backwater species from India and Pakistan (Newton and Smith, 1912;Chatterji et al, 1985;Nagi et al, 2011;Afsar et al, 2014;Trivedi et al, 2015). The taxonomic status of the extant species is unclear; based on molecular data, Reece et al (2008) considered C. "gryphoides" to be closely related with C. belcheri (Sowerby, 1871), whilst molecular data of Trivedi et al (2015) suggest a close rela- tion with C. cuttackensis (Newton and Smith, 1912), which was originally described as subspecies of C. gryphoides.…”