Research Article

A brief history of freshwater fish parasitology in southern Africa

Published in: African Zoology
Volume 50 , issue 2 : Animal parasitology in Africa , 2015 , pages: 93–107

DOI: 10.1080/15627020.2015.1053409

Author(s): Jo G van As Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of the Free State, South Africa

Keywords: Branchiura , Cestoda , Copepoda , Crustacea , Digenea , Monogenea , Myxosporea , Nematoda , Protozoa

Abstract

The paper presents an overview of the history of aquatic parasitology of freshwater fish in southern Africa. Aquatic parasitology has become a very popular field of specialisation in South Africa and is currently practised by a number of individual research groups at different universities. So far most research deals with parasites of wild fish rather than pathogens of aquaculture. It is written as a narrative and summarises the aquatic parasitology research mostly on fish parasites carried out at the universities of Cape Town, Free State, Johannesburg, Limpopo, Pretoria, North West and Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences. It is not intended to be a review in the classical way because it deals with parasites ranging from Protozoa to Arthropoda.

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