Does anyone have a peer-reviewed reference with prevalence >10% for the bopyrid isopod Probopyrus pandalicola on the daggerblade grass shrimp Palaemonetes pugio? We hear a lot of anecdotal reports of extremely high prevalence for this parasite-host pair >50%, but cannot find any comparable literature to cite. There are records of this bopyrid on other hosts, with prevalence ~18%. There are also records of related bopyrids on other hosts with much higher prevalence too, but no records that we have been able to find for the parasite-host combination that we have here in Georgia.
Prevalence here is approximately 0-6%, and we commonly field questions about the importance of an uncommon parasite on an abundant host. Many researchers have been trying to work out how this symbiotic relationship might change with higher temperatures, but it has been difficult to determine thus far because of the large spatial range of Probopyrus pandalicola and the large number of host species. Citations for high parasite prevalence in other areas would be much appreciated, and would help our research substantially.
You can infer it from Anderson G. 1975 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0300-9629(75)80153-8)
Look at the methods and table 2.
I do not see any way to infer prevalence from Anderson 1975. At best you can assume that the shrimp in table 2 indicate every parasitized shrimp caught, but there is no information about the numbers of shrimp in the population from which those were collected. Even with low prevalence here, we can collect 10- 50 parasitized shrimp when needed because the total abundance of the shrimp is high. I used >100 parasitized shrimp in only 1 experiment over the summer.
It would be a big assumption, and probably erroneous, to assume that the ratio of parasitized to unparasitized shrimp used in Anderson's experiments were representative of prevalence in the parent population.
You may want to look in Beck's dissertation. I had a cursory look through two of his papers and while they give extensive discussion of the life history of the parasite and its effect on the host, nowhere did I see any prevalence data. However, he did mention that such information was present in his 1979 dissertation. The Beck and Cowell paper on the host may also have some prevalence data, but I didn't look it over.
See Beck's 1979 paper in Parasitology. I wasn't able to download it, but the abstract states some very high prevalence levels: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=4117960&fileId=S003118200005383X
I'll take a look, Beck studied Palaemonetes paludosus, not pugio, but that would still be a good reference to have.
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