Research
| Title： | Intraspecific morphological variation in myxosporeans: high pleomorphic myxospores in the same plasmodium of Myxobolus drjagini (Akhmerov, 1954) |
|---|---|
| First author： | Liu, Yang; Yao, Jiayun; Yao, Xin; Zhang, Kaijie; Wang, Qingyong; Pan, Xiaoyi; Zhang, Jinyong |
| Journal： | FOLIA PARASITOLOGICA |
| Years： | 2022 |
| DOI： | 10.14411/fp.2022.006 |
| Abstract： | The taxonomy of myxosporeans was traditionally dependent solely upon the spore morphological and morphometric data. Intensive reports of intraspecific morphological variation, however, are increasingly challenging the taxonomic approaches for myx-osporeans. In the present work, the morphological pleomorphism of myxospores of Myxobolus drjagini (Akhmerov, 1954) was ob-served. More interestingly, all of these pleomorphic myxospores occurred in the same plasmodium of M. drjagini, which refutes the previous hypothesis that morphological variation of M. drjagini was derived from its responses to differences in nutrition and immuno-logical responses associated with different host tissues. Bearing the intraspecific morphometric and morphotype variation in mind, the combination of morphological, ecological and molecular data should be applied to the species identification and delimitation for myx-osporeans. This is the first reported myxobolid species with high pleomorphic myxospores which are present in the same plasmodium. |
