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. 2019 Sep 10;14(9):e0221475.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0221475. eCollection 2019.

Characterization of ecto- and endoparasite communities of wild Mediterranean teleosts by a metabarcoding approach

Affiliations

Characterization of ecto- and endoparasite communities of wild Mediterranean teleosts by a metabarcoding approach

Mathilde Scheifler et al. PLoS One. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Next-generation sequencing methods are increasingly used to identify eukaryotic, unicellular and multicellular symbiont communities within hosts. In this study, we analyzed the non-specific reads obtained during a metabarcoding survey of the bacterial communities associated to three different tissues collected from 13 wild Mediterranean teleost fish species. In total, 30 eukaryotic genera were identified as putative parasites of teleosts, associated to skin mucus, gills mucus and intestine: 2 ascomycetes, 4 arthropods, 2 cnidarians, 7 nematodes, 10 platyhelminthes, 4 apicomplexans, 1 ciliate as well as one order in dinoflagellates (Syndiniales). These results highlighted that (1) the metabarcoding approach was able to uncover a large spectrum of symbiotic organisms associated to the fish species studied, (2) symbionts not yet identified in several teleost species were putatively present, (3) the parasitic diversity differed markedly across host species and (4) in most cases, the distribution of known parasitic genera within tissues is in accordance with the literature. The current work illustrates the large insights that can be gained by making maximum use of data from a metabarcoding approach.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1
Relative abundance of eukaryotic supergroups amoung all eukaryotic reads within each fish species in (A) skin mucus, (B) gills mucus and (C) intestine. The number of specimens for each column for each tissue is indicated as follows: number of specimens of (skin mucus, gill mucus, intestine), Diplodus annularis (5,5,3), D. vulgaris (2,5,2), Gobius bucchichi (3,5,3), G. cruentatus (2,2,2), G. niger (2,3,3), Oblada melanura (4,5,3), Pagellus bogaraveo (3,4,2), P. erythrinus (5,5,5), Sarpa salpa (5,5,3), Scorpaena notata (5,5,4), Serranus scriba (5,5,3), Spicara maena (5,5,2), Symphodus tinca (5,5,3) (see Table 1).
Fig 2
Fig 2. Eukaryotic parasitic community structure and distribution of each parasitic taxa within skin mucus, gill mucus and intestine for the fish family Sparidae.
Percentages of parasitic taxa are indicated for proportions greater than 5%. Prevalence (proportion of individuals infected by a parasite taxon) is provided as a percentage around the outer circle.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Eukaryotic parasitic community structure and distribution of each parasitic taxa within skin mucus, gills mucus and intestine for the fish families Gobiidae, Scorpaenidae, Serranidae and Labridae.
Percentages of parasitic taxa are indicated for proportions greater than 5%. Prevalence (proportion of individuals infected by a parasite taxon) is provided as a percentage around the outer circle.

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