Data from: Fluid preservation causes minimal reduction of parasite detectability in fish specimens: a new approach for reconstructing parasite communities of the past?
Authors/Creators
- 1. University of California Irvine
- 2. University of Washington
- 3. Smithsonian Institution
Description
- Long-term datasets are needed to evaluate temporal patterns in wildlife disease burdens, but historical data on parasite abundance are extremely rare. For more than a century, natural history collections have been accumulating fluid-preserved specimens, which should contain the parasites infecting the host at the time of its preservation. However, before this unique data source can be exploited, we must identify the artefacts that are introduced by the preservation process. Here, we experimentally address whether the preservation process alters the degree to which metazoan parasites are detectable in fluid-preserved fish specimens when using visual parasite detection techniques.
- We randomly assigned fish of three species (Gadus chalcogrammus, Thaleichthys pacificus, Parophrys vetulus) to two treatments. In the first treatment, fish were preserved according to the standard procedures used in ichthyological collections. Immediately after the fluid-preservation process was complete, we performed parasitological dissection on those specimens. The second treatment was a control, in which fish were dissected without being subjected to the fluid-preservation process. We compared parasite abundance between the two treatments.
- Across 298 fish individuals and 59 host–parasite pairs, we found few differences between treatments, with 24 of 27 host–parasite pairs equally abundant between the two treatments. Of these, one pair was significantly more abundant in the preservation treatment than in the control group, and two pairs were significantly less abundant in the preservation treatment than in the control group.
- Our data suggest that the fluid-preservation process does not have a substantial effect on the detectability of metazoan parasites. This study addresses only the effects of the fixation and preservation process; long-term experiments are needed to address whether parasite detectability remains unchanged in the months, years, and decades of storage following preservation. If so, ecologists will be able to reconstruct novel, long-term datasets on parasite diversity and abundance over the past century or more using fluid-preserved specimens from natural history collections.
Notes
This deposition includes several datasets: one raw dataset on the abundance of various parasite taxa in Walleye Pollock (Gadus chalcogrammus; PollockParasites.csv), one raw dataset on the abundance of various parasite taxa in Eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus; EulachonParasites.csv), one raw dataset on the abundance of various parasite taxa in English sole (Parophrys vetulus; EngSoleParasites.csv), and a dataset containing meta-data collected on each host fish individual sampled (HostData.csv).
Data are available in this repository, and are also permanently archived in GitHub: https://github.com/wood-lab/Fiorenza_et_al_2020_Ecol_Evol
Funding provided by: National Science Foundation
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001
Award Number: OCE-1829509
Funding provided by: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000879
Award Number: Sloan Research Fellowship
Funding provided by: UW President's Innovation Imperative*
Crossref Funder Registry ID:
Award Number: UW Innovation Award
Funding provided by: UW Royalty Research Fund*
Crossref Funder Registry ID:
Award Number:
Funding provided by: School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100008142
Award Number: SAFS Scholarship
Funding provided by: Washington Sea G*
Crossref Funder Registry ID:
Award Number:
Funding provided by: Washington Sea Grant, University of Washington
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100005799
Award Number: Program Development Grant