Saturday 21 March 2015

A Trematode Flatworm from the intestines of freshwater Fish in Hidalgo State, Mexico.


Trematode Flatworm infections are very common in freshwater Fish, but tend not to be well studied except in instances where they also cause infections in Humans or domestic animals. However in recent years it has been shown that these parasites can be very useful in understanding the evolution of freshwater ecosystems, as they have a much shorter generation time, and therefore evolve more rapidly, with different populations becoming reproductively isolated much more quickly than their hosts, which can provide insight into the movements of ancient waterways.

In a paper published in the journal ZooKeys on 16 February 2015, Christian Bautista-Hernández, Scott Monks and Griselda Pulido-Flores of the Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo and Rafael Miranda of the Department of Zoology and Ecology at the University of Navarra describe a new species of Trematode Flatworm from two species of Poeciliid Fish (Tooth Carp) from the Río Malila a tributary of the Río Conzintla in Hidalgo State, Mexico.

The new species is placed in the genus Paracreptotrema and given the specific name rosenthali, in honour of Gil Rosenthal of the Department of Biology at Texas A&M University. It was found in the intestines of two species of Fish, Xiphophorus malinche (Highland Swordtail) and Pseudoxiphophorus jonesii (Barred Killifish).

Ventral view of Paracreptotrema rosenthali; arrows indicate fragments of
eyespot pigment. Bautista-Hernández et al. (2015).

Members of the genus Paracreptotrema have previously been found in Poeciliid and Profundulid Fish in river basins in Central America, as far north as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southeastern Mexico. The Río Malila forms part of the Río Pánuco Basin, which is separated from these Fish populations be the Mexican Plateau, suggesting the historic presence of a previously unknown connection between these waterways.

See also…

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