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Year-round infections and complicated demography of a food-transmitted parasite Heliconema anguillae implying the feeding activity of Japanese eels in saline habitats

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Abstract

Seasonal changes in population structure of a trophically transmitted parasite Heliconema anguillae (Nematoda: Physalopteridae) were examined in Japanese eels Anguilla japonica caught from a small cove in Ehime Prefecture, western Japan. Demographic classification of the samples from May 2008 to March 2009 showed that the nematode infrapopulations in host individuals continuously involved newly recruited worms besides adults. Considering the complex life cycle of H. anguillae infecting the eel definitive hosts via their feeding on littoral crabs as the source of infection, this finding suggests that the eels in the cove constantly consume those intermediate hosts regardless of season. However, temperate eel species, including Japanese eels, are generally thought to lose their feeding activities during winter, and indeed, the winter water temperature at low tide in the sampling locality falls below the optimal thermal range for feeding. We thus suggest that the estuarine Japanese eels have a specific overwintering response to keep their feeding activity, unlike freshwater individuals, and require further studies to compare winter activities between various habitats within a river-estuarine system in different climatic zones along with the eel’s geographical distribution.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the local fisherman S. Takamori and his family for assistance in the field, and two anonymous reviewers for providing useful comments. Part of this study was financially supported by the Education Support Program (Good Practice) of the Graduate School of Biosphere Science, Hiroshima University (to H.K.), and by Grants-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (No. 228025 and 254625 to H.K.) and for Scientific Research (C) (No. 24580267 to K.N.), which were from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).

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Correspondence to Hirotaka Katahira.

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Katahira, H., Mizuno, K. & Nagasawa, K. Year-round infections and complicated demography of a food-transmitted parasite Heliconema anguillae implying the feeding activity of Japanese eels in saline habitats. Fish Sci 82, 863–871 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12562-016-1017-5

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