Parasitology celebrates World Fisheries Day with Special Issue on fish parasites
Datum: 01.12.2022
Parasitology celebrates World Fisheries Day with Special Issue on fish parasites
As Guest Editors, our three daughters have each gone on to pursue careers in technical sciences, the arts, or other endeavours instead of biology. When they would ask us why we study fish parasites, we’d highlight the impact of parasites on the growth, development and survival of cultured and wild fish. In recent years, mass-media paid much more attention to food‐borne zoonoses due to increased consumption of raw or undercooked fish infected with parasites; thus the word parasites and the damage caused by them are no longer exclusive to researchers.
Humans consume fish as one of the major sources of protein, and fisheries and aquaculture are steadily increasing production. However, fish parasites are responsible for losses in aquaculture and fisheries estimated at almost USD 10 billion annually. As parasitology researchers, we mainly study the diversity of fish parasites, their life cycles, distribution, and relationships with their fish hosts. In practice, one would say about our achievements “Who cares?”. Indeed, our research has not resulted in new antiparasitic drugs or baths against ectoparasites, but we are fully convinced that our work has contributed to a better understanding of the actual role of parasites in aquatic ecosystems, their relationships with their hosts, developmental cycles and transmission. It is a very small, but hopefully important piece of a big mosaic on how ecosystems function and the role of their individual components. The future development of our planet cannot be accurately predicted without understanding the basic principles of what happens in nature, especially while we face global problems such as climate change.
Monobothrium wageneri in intestine of Tinca tinca
Over the past 18 months, several authors and two Guest Editors have worked together on a Special Issue (SI) on Fish Parasites for the Cambridge University Press journal, Parasitology, the longest-running journal among periodicals in the field. Our SI contains 13 articles, including reviews and original research articles, co-authored by world-leading experts in individual research fields of fish parasitology.
The articles cover different aspects of fish parasitology and demonstrate important achievements, map existing gaps and outline future trends in research on these peculiar organisms. We strongly believe that readers will find valuable information in this SI, and that it will serve as an inspiration for future research on fish parasites.
Cestodes (Proteocephalus macrocephalus) from an eel (Anguilla anguilla) in Italy
Photos and video credits: Tomáš Scholz and Bahram Sayyaf Dezfuli
