Patterns of the parasite communities in a fish assemblage of a river in the Brazilian Amazon region.
This paper characterizes the pattern of ectoparasite and endoparasite communities in an assemblage of 35 sympatric fish from different trophic levels in a tributary from the Amazon River system, northern Brazil. In detritivorous, carnivorous, omnivorous and piscivorous hosts, the species richness consisted of 82 ectoparasites and endoparasites, but protozoan ectoparasites such as Ichthyophthirius multifiliis, Piscinoodinium pillulare and Tripartiella sp. were dominant species predominated, such that they were present in 80% of the hosts. The taxon richness was in the following order: Monogenea > Nematoda > Digenea > Crustacea > Protozoa > Acanthocephala = Cestoda > Hirudinea. Among the hosts, the highest number of parasitic associations occurred in Satanoperca jurupari, Aequidens tetramerus, Hoplerythrinus unitaeniatus, Hoplosternum littorale, Cichlasoma amazonarum, Chaetobranchus flavescens, Squaliforma emarginata, Chaetobranchopsis orbicularis and Hoplias malabaricus. A weak positive correlation between ectoparasite abundance and length of the hosts was observed. Ectoparasite communities of detritivorous, carnivorous and omnivorous hosts were similar, but these differed from the communities of piscivorous hosts. Larval endoparasite species with low host specificity were the main determinants of the parasite infracommunity structure of the fish assemblage. Fish assemblage had few species of helminth that were specialist endoparasites, while many were parasites at the larval stage, infecting intermediate and paratenic hosts. Finally, carnivorous and omnivorous hosts harbored endoparasite communities that were more heterogeneous than those of detritivorous and piscivorous hosts. This result lends supports to the notion that the feeding habits of the host species are a significant factor in determining the endoparasites fauna.
['Baia|Raimundo Rosemiro Jesus|RRJ|', 'Florentino|Alexandro Cezar|AC|', 'Silva|Luís Maurício Abdon|LMA|', 'Tavares-Dias|Marcos|M|']
D000049:Acanthocephala D000818:Animals D001938:Brazil D002397:Catfishes D060125:Characiformes D023681:Cichlids D016770:Ciliophora Infections D005393:Fish Diseases D005399:Fishes D006373:Helminthiasis D058507:Host Specificity D007814:Larva D007865:Leeches D016802:Oligohymenophorea D010271:Parasites D045483:Rivers
parasites Amazon trophic level Brazil