parasites of offshore big game fishes of puerto rico - Uprm

INTRODUCTION
Host Summaries and Host-Disease Checklists include the complete classification of
these fishes and a list of the diseases we found on each host from the western
Atlantic and parasites on these fishes worldwide.
We hope you will use this book as your guide to the parasites of big game
fishes. Within the drama of big game fishing lies a play-within-a-play of the
parasites and associates of these great fishes. We look forward to receiving
reader input concerning these fascinating creatures. - - - Good fishing!
DEFINITIONS AND CONVENTIONS
We tried to avoid the use of scientific jargon, but some scientific terms must
be used for the sake of conciseness, clarity or continuity. These terms are either
defined where they appear, in each
section explanation or below.
Levels of infections for microscopic
parasites (protista) were estimated from
skin or fin scrapings or gill clippings
viewed with a compound microscope.
Five medium power (100X) fields were
averaged to establish parasite levels
shown in the box at right. The very
light category can be less than 1 because
the value was taken from 5 fields.
These categories were also used to
express the number of metazoan
parasites per host (or average of 5 hosts when possible).
Frequency of Infection
always = 100-99%
almost always = 98-90%
usually = 89-70%
frequently = 69-50%
commonly = 49-30%
often = 29-10%
occasionally = 9-1%
rarely =