• Journal of fish pathology
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.79-85
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• 2015

A specimen of porous-head eelpout Bothrocara hollandi (Zoarcidae: Perciformes) caught from the East Sea was found to harbour a myxosporean parasite. Numerous whitish pseudocysts were scattered throughout the body musculature of this individual specimen. Fresh myxosporean spores were found from the squashed pseudocysts under light microscopy. They were subspherical in frontal view with a length of $11.9(11.0{\sim}13.5){\mu}m$, width of $11.6(10.7{\sim}13.6){\mu}m$, and thickness of $7.8(6.9{\sim}8.8){\mu}m$. Two polar capsules were almost equally pyriform with a length of $4.4(3.2{\sim}5.3){\mu}m$ and width of $3.3(2.4{\sim}4.2){\mu}m$. Morphometric and host ecology analysis revealed that this myxosporean parasite could be identified as Myxobolus aeglefini Auerbach 1906. Phylogenetic analysis based on 18S rDNA sequences also revealed that M. aeglefini was clustered with M. albi and M. groenlandicus in the same branch, sharing 97.7% and 96.9% sequence similarities with M. albi and M. groenlandicus, respectively.