OCCURRENCE OF CAMALLANIDS (NEMATODA: CAMALLANIDAE) IN FISH HOSTS FROM THE PERUVIAN AMAZONIA

Fish from the Peruvian Amazon are parasitized by camallanids. These parasites have been reported infecting fishes from South America. In Peru, few studies have been conducted. In that way, the main objective of the present study was to report and identify the camallanids present in 20 fish species collected in the Peruvian Amazonia: Acestrorhynchus falcirostris (Cuvier, 1819), Megaloeporinus trifasciatus (Steindachner, 1876), Hoplerythrinus unitaeniatus (Spix & Agassiz, 1829), Hoplias malabaricus (Bloch, 1794), Brycon amazonicus (Spix & Agassiz, 1829), Mylossoma duriventre (Cuvier, 1818), Colossoma macropomum (Cuvier, 1818), Pygocentrus nattereri (Kner, 1858), Serrasalmus rhombeus (Linnaeus, 1766), Triportheus angulatus (Spix & Agassiz, 1829), Hydrolycus scomberoides (Cuvier, 1819), Plagioscion squamosissimus (Heckel, 1840), Brachyplatystoma vaillantii (Valenciennes, 1840), Hypophthalmus celiae (Littmann, Lundberg & Rocha, 2021), Pseudoplatystoma punctifer (Castelnau, 1855), Pseudoplatystoma tigrinum (Valenciennes, 1840), Corydoras leopardus (Myers, 1933), Corydoras virginiae (Burgess, 1993), Corydoras splendens (Castelnau, 1855) and Corydoras multiradiatus (Orcés V., 1960). Samples were analyzed through tissue and organ dissection methods for macroscopic evaluation and subsequent parasitic morphological and morphometric evaluation. Six species of camallanids were identified infecting the internal organs of analyzed fish: Paracamallanus amazonensis (Ferraz & Thatcher, 1992), Spirocamallanus krameri (Petter, 1974), Spirocamallanus iheringi (Travassos, Artigas & Pereira, 1928), Spirocamallanus inopinatus (Travassos, Artigas & Pereira, 1928), Procamallanus (Spirocamallanus) juana (Ramallo & Ailan Choke, 2017) and Spirocamallanus pintoi (Kohn & Fernandes, 1988).