A molecular and ecological study of (Cestoda: Trypanorhyncha) larval infection in small to mid-sized benthonic sharks in the Gulf of Naples, Mediterranean Sea.

Aim: Trypanorhyncha cestodes comprise a wide range of heteroxenous parasites infecting elasmobranchs as definitive hosts. Limited data exist on the larval infection of these cestodes and the role of intermediate and paratenic hosts in the life cycle of these parasites. We investigated the factors that determine the occurrence and the level of infection of plerocerci in the skeletal muscles of various benthonic sharks and analyzed the parasites through an integrative taxonomic approach.

Location: Mediterranean Sea.

Methods: Sharks obtained as bycatch of commercial trawling activities (i.e., , , and ) were used in this study. Data from a limited number of and were also included. plerocerci were molecularly characterized using the partial 28S large subunit rDNA. Boosted regression trees were used to model the relationship between the abundance of infection with both morphological and physiological predictors in each host.

Results: Plerocerci of were detected in all shark species except . Host species significantly differed in terms of parasite abundance, with the highest and lowest prevalence and abundance of infection detected in and , respectively. The relative influence of the traits involved in explaining the parasite abundance was related to the host size in . , while both morphology- and physiology-related traits explained the patterns observed in .  and . . The 28S rDNA sequences shared an identity of ∼99.40% with a species previously found in the Mediterranean Sea. At intraspecific level, two different genotypes were found. A first type was retrieved only from . , whereas a second type was found in , , and .

Main Conclusions: Present results suggest that the two genotypes could be involved in different consumer-resource systems and confirm most of the examined shark species as transport hosts of species for unknown larger top predators.