The prevalence of the common prawn parasite:
Bopyrus squilarum around Ireland.
Introduction:
Bopyrus squilarum is a hematophagous
parasite which lives on the gill chambers of
the common marine prawn, Palaemon
serratus . It appears on the body of the
prawn as a transparent tumour. It belongs to
the sub-order Cymothoidae. This parasite
has a holoxenic life cycle. It does not kill the
host but it does dampen the host population.
Therefore, it can cause economic loss as the
total annual value of the common prawn
fishery in Ireland can reach €8.25 million.
(Ravichandran, Rameshkumar and
Balasubramanian, 2010)
Figure 1: Different life cycle stages of
Bopyrus Squilarum.
Ravichandran, Rameshkumar and Balasubramanian,
2010)
Maria Browne, Katie O Dwyer
BSc applied freshwater and marine biology
Figure 2: Image showing bait trap used to
catch common prawn.(Dodds, 2018)
Methods:
Samples of Palaemon serratus will be obtained
from fisherman in Galway, Donegal, Dublin and
Kerry. Common prawns are caught using bait
traps which usually contain oily fish such as
Herring.
The prawns will be frozen initially. I will then
defrost the samples and calculate the
prevalence of the parasite in each sample from
each region.
Prevalence (%) = number of infected prawns in
sample/ total number of prawns in sample*100
Results:
Conclusions:
The results show that Galway has the highest prevalence (%)
of Bopyrus Squilarum out of all four regions examined (40%).
This differs significantly from the 5% prevalence of Bopyrus
squilarum calculated for Kerry.
External factors such as water pollution could potentially be
effecting host immune system differently in various parts of the
country which would account for the difference in parasite
prevalence observed in this study.
Further research should be carried out to assess the potential
of Bopyrus squilarum as a biological indicator
References:
1)Ravichandran, S., Rameshkumar, G. and Balasubramanian, T. (2010).
Infestation of isopod parasites in commercial marine fishes. Journal of Parasitic
Diseases, 34(2), pp.97-98.
2) Dodds, R. (2018). Best Prawn Bait and Shrimp Bait - Is your bait the Best?.
[online] Fishinbc.com. Available at: http://www.fishinbc.com/prawn-bait/].