Platyhelminthes, Minot, 1876

Smit, Nico J., Malherbe, Wynand & Hadfield, Kerry A., 2017, Alien freshwater fish parasites from South Africa: Diversity, distribution, status and the way forward, International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife 6 (3), pp. 386-401 : 397

4.2. Phylum Platyhelminthes

4.2.1. Gyrodactylus kobayashii

The gyrodactylid, G. kobayashii , is a parasite of the goldfish, C. auratus , and has a world-wide distribution due to it being co-introduced with its ornamental fish hosts. In a non-peer reviewed published conference abstract by Maseng et al. (2010), the authors reported G. kobayashii present on both commercially bought, as well as wild caught, C. auratus in the Western Cape Province of South Africa (Table 1). Maseng et al. (2010) did not list the specific locality of the wild caught fish in the conference abstract but indicated the locality as the Kuils River in her unpublished Masters dissertation (Maseng, 2010). As this record of the co-introduction of G. kobayashii into South Africa is in non-peer reviewed publications, these records are classified as uncertain until formal publication thereof.

4.2.2. Pseudodactylogyrus anguillae

The monogenean, P. anguillae , is an ectoparasite originally described from the gills of the Japanese eel, Anguilla japonica Temminck and Schlegel, 1846 . Following its original description, it was discovered to have invaded Europe where it was first found in 1977 on the gills of the European eel, Anguilla anguilla from an eel farm in the western Soviet Union ( Buchmann et al., 1987). Pseudodactylogyrus anguillae has subsequently been recorded from wild populations of the American eel, Anguilla rostrata (Lesueur, 1817) in Canada ( Cone and Marcogliese, 1995) and the USA ( Hayward et al., 2001). The first report from South Africa was by Christison and Baker (2007) who reported P. anguillae from the gills of the longfin eel, Anguilla mossambica collected from four rivers in the Eastern Cape (Table 1). Parker et al. (2011) and McHugh et al. (2017) subsequently extended the distribution range by including additional sites from the Eastern Cape (Table 1). However, Ogawa et al. (2015) and McHugh et al. (2017) raised concerns about the identity of what was thought to be P. anguillae from South Africa as its origin in this region is uncertain since no record of the introduction of A. japonica , or any other non-native eels into South Africa, can be found ( Ellender and Weyl, 2014). Until further molecular analysis on the South African population of P. anguillae , using a combination of different genetic markers, has been completed and its identity confirmed, we provisionally assign this species to the uncertain invasive status category.