Folia Parasitologica 71:018 (2024) | DOI: 10.14411/fp.2024.018

Description of three new species of Kudoa Meglitsch, 1947 (Myxozoa: Multivalvulida) in commercial marine fishes from southern China, and new host records

Ying-Chun Li^{1, 5}, Ken Inoue^{2, 5}, Jin-Yong Zhang ORCID...³, Hiroshi Sato ORCID...^{2, 4, *}

¹ Faculty of Agricultural Science, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang, China;

² Laboratory of Parasitology, Joint Graduate School of Veterinary Medicine, Yamaguchi, Japan;

³ Laboratory of Aquatic Parasitology, School of Marine Science and Engineering, Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao, China;

⁴ Division of Veterinary Parasitology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia;

⁵ These authors contributed equally to this work *Address for correspondence: Hiroshi Sato, Laboratory of Parasitology, Joint Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Yamaguchi University, 1677-1 Yoshida, Yamaguchi 753-8515, Japan. E-mail: sato7dp4@yamaguchi-u.ac.jp; ORCID-iD: 0000-0002-5230-4677

Multivalvulidan myxosporeans (Multivalvulida) of the genera Unicapsula Davis, 1924 and Kudoa Meglitsch, 1947 are mostly causative agents of latent and imperceptible infection in marine fishes. However, they are sometimes incriminated in causing post-mortem myoliquefaction or unsightly cyst formation in commercial fish. Despite the great commercial impacts of multivalvulidan infection, the biodiversity, host range and epidemiology of multivalvulidan species remain to be explored further, including infection of alternative annelid hosts. Therefore, this study aimed to identify multivalvulidan species and their host and/or distribution records in commercial fishes in China. Multivalvulidan infection was detected in ten commercial fish species of seven families from the South and East China Seas (Northwest Pacific Ocean) and the Eastern Central Atlantic Ocean (an imported Dagetichthys lusitanicus [de Brito Capello]). Based on morphological and molecular-genetic analyses of their small and large subunit of ribosomal RNA genes, five new host and/or geographical distribution records for five fish species are presented, and three new species in five fish species are described, namely Kudoa neoscomberomori sp. n. in Scomberomorus commerson (Lacépède); Kudoa pilosa sp. n. in Helicolenus hilgendorfi (Döderlein) (type host) and Sebastiscus tertius (Barsukov et Chen); and Kudoa tumidisporica sp. n. in Photopectoralis bindus (Valenciennes) (type host) and Nuchequula nuchalis (Temminck et Schlegel). This study provides new data on multivalvulidan diversity in the ocean ecosystem.

Keywords: Myxosporea, myxospore, morphology, diversity, molecular-genetic analysis, rDNA, mtDNA, Northwest Pacific Ocean

Received: August 28, 2023; Revised: July 23, 2024; Accepted: July 26, 2024; Published online: October 15, 2024  Show citation