Th. Cribb et al., ECOLOGY AND DIVERSITY OF DIGENEAN TREMATODES OF REEF AND INSHORE FISHES OF QUEENSLAND, International journal for parasitology, 24(6), 1994, pp. 851-860
Coral reefs harbour an extraordinary, concentrated diversity of life.
What are the implications of this for parasites? After the corals them
selves, the most striking component of coral reefs is the fishes. Indi
vidual coral reefs may harbour as many as a thousand species of fishes
. Like most fishes, those of coral reefs bear remarkable loads of para
sites. Records of digenean trematodes from 214 species of fishes from
the Great Barrier Reef and 103 species of fishes from inshore Australi
an waters are compared to examine the ecological expression of parasit
e diversity on coral reefs. Coral reef fish had an overall prevalence
of infection of 70% compared with 48% for their inshore counterparts a
nd averaged 2.61 species of digenean per host species as compared with
only 1.41 for the inshore group. A total of 236 species of Digenea ha
s been collected from reef fishes, Most of the digeneans are concentra
ted in just a few families. Host-specificity of digeneans of reef fish
es is variable but, on average, each species infects 2.37 host species
. Characteristics of the fauna studied so far are used to predict that
the 1300 fishes of the Australian Great Barrier Reef are likely to ha
rbour some 2270 species of Digenea.