Prevalence and spatial distribution of the ectoparasites on the gills of Mystus vittatus from River Penna flowing through YSR District, Andhra Pradesh, India

AbstractA parasitic survey was performed during July 2017 to February 2018 to emphasize the prevalence and spatial distribution of ectoparasites inMystus vittatus from three sampling sites of River Penna flowing through YSR District, Andhra Pradesh  by routine parasitological procedures. A total of 238 ectoparasites were obtained from the gills of 70 examined fishes with a prevalence of 77.1%, mean intensity of 4.4 and mean abundance of 3.4 respectively. Three species of ectoparasites i.e., two monogeneans—Cornudiscoides vittati (n  = 119);Bifurcohaptor indicus (n  = 90) and one copepod,Lamproglena hospetensis (n  = 29) were obtained from the gills of the host. All the 3 species of gill ectoparasites showed an aggregated distribution pattern (2.92, 2.52 and 2.83). Only,B. indicus showed a significant positive relationship between the condition factor and parasitic abundance (rs = 0.361,p = 0.0021) followed byC. vittati (rs = 0.206,p = 0.086) whereas the parasitic abundance ofL. hospetensis (rs = − 0.213,p = 0.076) showed a weak negative correlation with the relative condition factor of the host. Parasitization was analyzed location wise and fishes collected from Site-I (Mylavaram) were highly infected with both the monogeneans while parasitization with copepods was nil. However, the parasitizati on of copepods was relatively higher in Site-II (Chennur). There was no influence of host size and host sex on the parasitization and also ...
Source: Journal of Parasitic Diseases - Category: Parasitology Source Type: research