Morphologic diversity of piscine trypanosomes in 5 wild fish species: clarias gariepinus, tilapia zillii, synodontis nigrata, bagras bayad, and mormyrus rume of North Western Nigeria

Abstract

A total of 110 Piscine trypanosomes from five species of Wild fish- Clarias gariepinus, Tilapia zilli, Synodontis nigrata, Mormyrus rume, and Bagrus bayad captured from Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara States Nigeria, were Morphologically characterized. Parasites differ in size, shape and staining reaction. T. zilli were predominantly found to harbor larger and monomorphic forms, S. nigrata with smaller monomorphic, while C. gariepinus, M. rume and B. bayad were infected with medium sized pleomorphic trypamastigotes. While most of the trypanosomes had anterior disposed nucleus common feature of African piscine trypanosomes, some trypanosomes in C.gariepinus; T. zilli and M .rume from 4 locations, possessed posterior inclined nucleus, NI < 1. That was statistically significant (P <0.05). Total length TL of parasite in T. zilli. and S.nigrata. were statistically not significant (P> 0.05) indicating uniformity in characters and species specificity of the parasite in each species. The pleomorphic medium forms are tentatively identified as T mukasai, while the specie specific larger and smaller group and those with posterior inclined nucleus are considered new species.