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Parasites of Urophycis brasiliensis (Gadiformes: Phycidae) as indicators of marine ecoregions in coastal areas of the South American Atlantic

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Abstract

The potential value of parasites as ecosystem markers was tested by analyzing the metazoan assemblages of Urophycis brasiliensis caught in four locations distributed in three ecoregions of the Warm Temperate Southwestern Atlantic. A total of 5,001 metazoan parasites belonging to 33 species were found. The identified parasites varied across locations in terms of presence, prevalence, and abundance, and their multivariate analyses resulted in clear similarity patterns. No differences were observed between two locations of the same ecoregion, whereas an evident separation of samples was observed across ecoregions in support of the existing hypotheses regarding the ecoregional division of the southwestern Atlantic. We proposed that parasite assemblages, which are composed of several metazoan phyla, are potentially useful as ecosystem indicators. This suggestion is derived from the combined evidence of the evolutionary history and biogeography of multiple lineages, which is expected to be more efficient in capturing recurrent patterns in overall biodiversity than individual lineages. Furthermore, as many parasites have complex life cycles, their distribution patterns are dependent not only on environmental conditions but also on the distribution and population density of all hosts involved in their life cycles, adding further sources of distributional variability that act synergistically to define robust geographical patterns. The selection of long-lived parasites and their comparative analysis provided evidence supporting the existence of three different stocks in the four sampled areas. The best parasite tags were those with low specificity in fish hosts, constituting promising biological tags for the stock discrimination of other fish species in the region.

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Acknowledgments

Financial support to Aldenice Pereira and José Luis Luque was provided by research fellowships from Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico do Brazil (CNPq). Camila Pantoja was supported by an M. Sc. fellowship from Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento do Pessoal do Ensino Superior (CAPES). Financial support to Juan T. Timi was provided by grants from CONICET (PIP # 112-201101-00036) and ANPCYT (PICT 2012 # 02094).

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  1. Curso de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Veterinárias and Departamento de Parasitologia Animal, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Caixa Postal 74.540, CEP 23851-970, Seropédica, RJ, Brasil

    Aldenice N. Pereira, Camila Pantoja & José L. Luque

  2. Laboratorio de Parasitología, Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras (IIMyC), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Funes 3350, (7600), Mar del Plata, Argentina

    Juan T. Timi

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  1. Aldenice N. Pereira
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Correspondence to Juan T. Timi.

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Pereira, A.N., Pantoja, C., Luque, J.L. et al. Parasites of Urophycis brasiliensis (Gadiformes: Phycidae) as indicators of marine ecoregions in coastal areas of the South American Atlantic. Parasitol Res 113, 4281–4292 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-014-4106-3

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