Description of a new species of Myxobolus Butschli, 1882 from the Cirrhinus mrigala Hamilton, 1822 an edible fish of India.

Myxobolus Bütschli 1882 is an important group of parasitic protozoa infecting a large number of freshwater fish species worldwide. The severity of Myxobolus infection leads to heavy loss in production of fishes. During the survey of the fish parasites, a new species of the genus Myxobolus have been isolated from the gills of a freshwater edible fish Cirrhinus mrigala Hamilton, 1822 from Canning, South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India which has been described here.

Effect of temperature on the prevalence of different parasites in Cirrhinus mrigala Hamilton of West Bengal.

A study has been done to find out the prevalence of different kinds of parasites in Cirrhinus mrigala (Hamilton 1822) during 2010-2011. It has been found that the temperature variation affects some parasitic infestation over the fish species. It was found that ciliophoran and crustacean parasites are more prevalent from November to February whereas the myxozoan and monogenean parasites are more prevalent from January to April. Considering temperature variation throughout the year it has been inferred that most of the parasitic infections were found between November and April when the temperature range varies from 19 to 26 °C. So from the study it can be concluded that lower temperature elicits the parasitic growth in fishes while the higher temperature retards the growth.

Description of a myxozoan parasite Myxobolus sp.n PKB2014 from an edible fish, with emphasis on its molecular characterization.

In India, more than 104 species of Myxobolus have so far been reported infecting freshwater as well as marine fishes. The study focuses on the description of a new myxosporean species, Myxobolus sp.n PKB 2014 from the gill lamellae of an Indian major carp Labeo rohita. The species have been described on the basis of morphological characterization of the spores, tissue architecture and 18S rDNA sequence data. The plasmodia of Myxobolus sp.n PKB 2014 were round in shape measuring, 50 to 70 µm in diameter and spores were ellipsoidal in frontal view measures 14.7 ± 0.51 µm. The 18S rRNA nucleotide sequence with 806 bp of Myxobolus sp.n PKB 2014 (Accession number KJ652226) clustered phylogenitically with other Myxobolus spp. infecting cyprinid gills with 90-99% similarity. According to the phylogenetic study we concluded that M. wulli was the closest relative having 99% similarity with the species under description but the sequence was distinct in each species which additionally exhibited different morphological features. The infection rate was low to moderate. After through comparison it can be concluded that the species being described here is new to science which is designated as Myxobolus sp.n. PKB 2014.