Líffræðifélag Íslands - biologia.is
Líffræðiráðstefnan 2025
Erindi/veggspjald / Talk/poster E66
Höfundar / Authors: Kristján Friðrik Sveinbjörnsson (1), Haseeb Randhawa (1)
Starfsvettvangur / Affiliations: 1. Háskóli Íslands
Kynnir / Presenter: Kristján Friðrik Sveinbjörnsson
Parasites have been neglected in ecological studies and have been labelled as ecologically insignificant. However, that is not the case since parasites have been proven to increase connectance in food webs by 93% and relative nestedness by 439%. Despite their importance, few studies have investigated the parasite fauna of freshwater salmonids in Iceland A previous study recorded 22 different species of parasites in the fish, 11 microparasites and 11 macroparasites. In lake Hítarvatn, arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus) seemed to be more infected with macroparasites in the body cavity and on the organs than the brown trout (Salmo trutta) when they were gutted. This difference sparked the question whether there was an overall difference in parasite abundance between S. alpinus and S. trutta. Upon further research, S. alpinus seems to be significantly more infected than S. trutta. The mean abundance, respectively, of: (1) metacercariae in S. alpinus was 141.88 (sd = ± 61.40) and in S. trutta 20.38 (± 14.12); (2) trematodes was 8.88 ( ± 6.71) compared to 18.75 ( ± 44.73); (3) adult tapeworms was 43.25 (± 52.21) compared to 4.25 (± 3.19); (4) larval tapeworms was 13.38 (± 15.16) compared to 1.00 (± 2.07); and (5) nematodes was 10.50 (± 12.97) compared to 2.00 (± 2.88). There was a higher abundance of macroparasites in all organs of S. alpinus compared to S. trutta. These results tell us that S. alpinus could be more prone to macroparasite infections than S. trutta in lake Hítarvatn.