TY  - JOUR
A1  - Münster, Julian
A1  - Kochmann, Judith
A1  - Grigat, Juline
A1  - Klimpel, Sven
A1  - Kuhn, Thomas
T1  - Parasite fauna of the Antarctic dragonfish Parachaenichthys charcoti (Perciformes: Bathydraconidae) and closely related Bathydraconidae from the Antarctic Peninsula, Southern Ocean
T2  - Parasites & vectors
N2  - Background: As members of the Notothenioidei - the dominant fish taxon in Antarctic waters - the family Bathydraconidae includes 12 genera and 17 species. The knowledge of these species inhabiting an isolated environment is rather fragmentary, including their parasite fauna. Studies on fish hosts and their associated parasites can help gain insights into even remote ecosystems and be used to infer ecological roles in food webs; however, ecological studies on the Bathydraconidae are scarce.
Results: In this study, stomach contents and parasite fauna of the Antarctic dragonfish species Parachaenichthys charcoti (n = 47 specimens) as well as of Gerlachea australis (n = 5), Gymnodraco acuticeps (n = 9) and Racovitzia glacialis (n = 6) were examined. The parasite fauna of P. charcoti consisted of eight genera represented by 11 species, with three of them being new host records. Overall, 24 parasite genera and 26 species were found in the sampled fish, including eleven new host records.
Conclusion: Analyses revealed that the majority of the parasite species found in the different fish hosts are endemic to Antarctic waters and are characterized by a broad host range. These findings are evidence for the current lack of knowledge and the need for further parasitological studies of fish species in this unique habitat.
KW  - Antarctica
KW  - Feeding behavior
KW  - Bathydraconinae
KW  - Parachaenichthys charcoti
KW  - Gerlachea australis
KW  - Gymnodraco acuticeps
KW  - Racovitzia glacialis
KW  - Parasites
KW  - Host specificity
Y1  - 2017
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/45012
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-450126
SN  - 1756-3305
N1  - © The Author(s). 2017 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
VL  - 10
IS  - 1, Art. 235
SP  - 1
EP  - 9
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -