Research lines

The general aim of the research carried out by members of the Group Ictioparasitología is to characterize parasitic communities harboured by fish from the Southwestern Atlantic and pampasic lakes, lagoons and streams, determining geographic patterns at the regional level and identifying the processes that originate them, with emphasis on the association between parasites and biological and hydrographic characteristics of water masses or bodies they inhabit and in their potential use as biological markers for host population discrimination. Our current projects, supported by grants from CONICET, ANPCyT and UNMdP, aim to characterize the parasitic communities of fish inhabiting the coastal region off Buenos Aires Province, the continental shelf (mostly those associated with the Malvinas Current and marine fronts), and those from Pampasic freshwater environments; to analyze the structure of parasitic populations and communities (at the infracommunity and community levels) and their relationships with main biological characteristics of the parasites and their hosts; to establish the importance of non-specific larval helminths in the structure and predictability of parasitic communities; to find general patterns trough the comparison of the parasitic communities among the species of fish studied; to identify parasites species useful as markers of geographic origin or migrations of different species of marine fish and to discriminate latitudinal patterns in populations of fish using their parasites as biological markers.