An Account on the Spatial Distribution and Diversity of Parasites on Commercial Fishes Caught from the Eastern Part of Andaman Waters, India

Abhijeet Purkayastha^1,2* and Ashish P Jacob¹

¹Fishery Survey of India, Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India
²Animal Morphology Lab, Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University, Japan

*Corresponding Author: Abhijeet Purkayastha, Fishery Survey of India, Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India.

Received: November 09, 2023 Published: December 12, 2023

Abstract

The coastal and marine ecosystems in an island is supported with a wide habitat range sustaining various ecological services. One of such services includes the fishing activities for commercial and recreational purposes. Since commercial importance of fishery resources is higher, regular studies in different aspects is important. The present study aims in contributing to such studies, particularly in the field of parasite infection. The distribution pattern of these parasites infecting different species of fishes were observed to be uniform in the waters around Andaman Islands. A total of 573 individuals of parasites including five species were recorded from four species of 183 individuals of fishes over a period of 6 months. The most abundant parasite species was observed to be Hirudinella ventricosa extracted from the gut of yellowfin tuna. Out of the 7 designated locations where the fishes were caught, location 4 (L-4) and 6 (L-6) were observed to have the maximum distribution and diversity. Similarity dendrogram also suggested alike results where the degree of similarity through clusters and vector directions favoured L-4 and L-6 locations. Analysis using ANOVA and other statistical parameters of the parasite and fish individuals resulted in data with no significant variation (p-value > 0.05). However, in terms of correlation through different correlation coefficient, it was observed to show a very high positive correlation. Thus, the result suggests strong unyielding association between the parasite and fish host which can be better understood with a long term spatial and temporal studies from the different regions of Andaman waters. This study serves as a baseline investigation for similar possible studies in the future.

Keywords: Copepod; Sailfish; MDS; Anisakis; Statistics; Hirudinella

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Citation

Citation: Abhijeet Purkayastha and Ashish P Jacob. “An Account on the Spatial Distribution and Diversity of Parasites on Commercial Fishes Caught from the Eastern Part of Andaman Waters, India".Acta Scientific Veterinary Sciences 6.1 (2024): 50-56.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2024 Abhijeet Purkayastha and Ashish P Jacob. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.