REVIEW ARTICLE


A Review of the Parasites of Deep-Water Fishes from Macaronesian Islands, North-East Atlantic Ocean



Graça Costa1, *, Luísa Costa2, Maria João Santos3, 4, E. Melo-Moreira1
1 Estação de Biologia Marinha do Funchal, Universidade da Madeira, Promenade Orla Marítima do Funchal, 9000-107 Funchal, Portugal
2 Estação de Biologia Marinha do Funchal, Departamento de Ciência da Câmara Municipal do Funchal, Funchal, Portugal
3 Departamento de Biologia, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre 4169-007 Porto, Portugal
4 CIMAR/CIIMAR Centro Interdisciplinar de Investigação Marinha e Ambiental, Av. General Norton de Matos s/n 4450-208 Matosinhos, Portugal


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Creative Commons License
© 2018 Costa et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to the author at the Estação de Biologia Marinha do Funchal, Universidade da Madeira, Promenade Orla Marítima do Funchal, 9000-107 Funchal, Portugal; E-mail: gcosta@uma.pt


Abstract

The deep-water fish fauna of Macaronesian islands is currently estimated at a total of 1029 different fish species, but records of both ecto- and endoparasites are from only about 30 of those species. This fact presents an exciting field of research for scientists interested in fish parasitology, by exploring the structure of parasite communities and their connections with ecological and oceanographic variables. Research on the effect of climatic changes on the parasite faunas, on the occurrence of fish parasites in man and its impact on human health, has not been carried out to date. The present review aims to collate our present knowledge about the parasites of deep-water fishes of Macaronesia, and to suggest directions for future research on the parasites of fishes from the deepwater realm. A checklist of the parasites infecting the deep-water fishes from this region is included.

Keywords: Deep-water fishes, Parasites, Madeira, Azores, Canary Islands, Macaronesian region.