The occurrence of Livoneca desterroensis (Isopoda, Cymothoidae) a parasite of Cetengraulis edentulus(Cuvier, 1828), (Engraulidae, Clupeiforme) captured on northeast Pará, Brazil

Abstract

The objective of this work was to evaluate the occurrence of crustacean Isopoda Cymothoidae Livoneca desterroensis (Thatcher, Souza-Conceição, Jost, 2003) in gills and mouth of Cetengraulis edentulus, captured in northeastern Pará, city of Bragança, Para, Brazil. The fish samples were monthly collected from November 2006 to November 2007 at different sites on the estuary, and in the beach of Ajuruteua (L 46°39’15’’ W 0°49’14’’) in Bragança municipality, with the aid of nets (18, 20 and 25 mm mesh). A total of 185 fishes were collected and 15.13% were infested with L. desterroensis. The highest prevalence (57.50%), mean intensity (1.05 fish-parasite) and abundance (0.58) of infestation occurred in April 2007 with a total of 20 female parasites with embryos in 33 hosts. Most parasites captured were females independent of the period. The fishes collected from November to February revealed low degree or no infestation. This is the first report of L. desterroensis parasite of C. edentulus on northeastern Pará, opening a new field of investigation in the parasite/host relations at the estuary of Bragança.