Abstract
The present paper reports the site of attachment preference, overlapping and partitioning of niche among different life stages of parasitic isopod Cymothoa indica Schiöedte and Meinert, 1884 in the Gobiidae fish Glossogobius giuris (Hamilton 1822) collected from the Chilika lagoon, India. Out of 2113 host fishes, 176 were found to be infected by the parasites. Out of the 233 different life stages of the parasites examined, 89 were female, 104 were male, and the rests were juveniles. 100% of the females, 84.6% of the male and 72.5% of the juveniles were found to be attached to the buccal cavity, while the rest of the males and juveniles were attached to the branchial cavity. In most cases, there was niche overlapping, leading to competition for the resources. Females preferred more specialized niches as compared to males and juveniles. In a few instances, there is niche partitioning, as shown by the male and juveniles. There is a negative correlation between the number of parasites found in the body of the fishes and the weight of the host fishes. This manuscript also provides a brief description of the different life stages of this parasite in the above-mentioned host collected from the same lagoon.
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Data availability
All the specimens are deposited at the National Repository of Estuarine Biology Regional Centre, Zoological Survey of India, Gopalpur-on-Sea, which can be verified after requesting the Officer-in-Charge.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to the support and facilities provided by Berhampur University, Odisha, India.
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The work was supported by the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Department of Science and Technology, Government of India (File No. EEQ/2021/000048) as a project grant to the corresponding Author.
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SKM and SS: sampling, data analysis and writing of the manuscript; JKS: conceptualisation of the idea, manuscript preparation and analysis.
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Mohapatra, S.K., Sura, S. & Seth, J.K. Overlapping and partitioning of niche among different life stages of the parasitic isopod Cymothoa indica in the host Glossoglobius guiris collected from the Chilika lagoon, India. Parasitol Res 121, 3217–3222 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-022-07641-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-022-07641-1