Understanding growth relationships of African cymothoid fish parasitic isopods using specimens from museum and field collections.

ABSTRACT: Cymothoid isopods are a diverse group of ectoparasites of fish species, and are particularly conspicuous as they are large and attach to the body surface, mouth, and gill chamber of fish hosts. These parasites transition from juvenile to male to female, and how their size changes with ontogeny and correlates with host size is not well understood. To better understand these relationships, data from field and museum collected samples of South Africa were combined to test for the associations between host and parasite length for three mouth and one gill chamber-infesting genera (Ceratothoa, Cinusa, Cymothoa, and Mothocya respectively). Generally, the number of parasites collected from 90 h of museum surveying was similar to that of seven, one-week long field collec

SUBMITTER: Welicky RL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6396080 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature