Pseudodactylogyrus anguillae

History of Spread

Pseudodactylogyrus anguillae, a gill trematode parasite of freshwater eels, is believed to be native to China and Japan, where its native host is Anguilla japonica (Japanese Eel) (Hayward et al. 2001). Cone and Marcogliese (1995) suggested that the present distribution of this parasite, now found in A. anguilla (European Eel) and A. rostrata (American Eel) showed that this parasite had evolved with ancestral eels in the Tethys Sea, but had failed to speciate as its hosts did. However, the genetic and morphological similarity of P. anguillae populations indicates that this parasite, together with its congener P. bini, and the nematode Anguillicola crassus, has been introduced around the Northern hemisphere as a result of worldwide trade and aquaculture of eels (Buchmann et al. 1987; Hayward et al. 2001a). Pseudodactylogyrus anguillae, was first found in Europe in 1977, in eel farms in the Western Soviet Union, and was found to be widespread on cultured and wild eels from Hungary, Italy to Denmark, Sweden, England and France in the 1980s (Buchmann et al. 1987).

Pseudodactylogyrus anguillae was first collected in North America in 1992, on A. rostrata in the Shubenacadie River, Nova Scotia (Cone and Marcogliese 1995). In 1999, Hayward et al. (2001a) collected the parasite on eels from the Cooper and Edisto Rivers (SC), and in Chesapeake Bay, from the Wicomico and Choptank Rivers (MD). Prevalence varied from 40-100% in SC, and 17.6-20% in MD. It is likely that this parasite has been widely overlooked on the East Coast, and was probably introduced at least 2 decades before its discovery (Hayward et al. 2001a).

References- Buchmann et al. 1987; Cone and Marcogliese 1995; Hayward et al. 2001a; Koie 1991

Invasion Comments