Authors
W Smallbone1; C van Oosterhout2; J Cable1; 1 Cardiff University; 2 University of East Anglia Discussion
Selective inbreeding of ornamental fish stocks to generate phenotypically identical stocks results in increased susceptibility to parasitism. Inbreeding depression can affect many different fitness-related traits, including survival, reproductive success, sexual ornamentation and courtship behaviour, and parasite susceptibility. Understanding the effects of inbreeding on these traits in fish is important because of their economic value and the constraints imposed on aquaculture by limited brood stock, high stocking densities and infectious disease. Resistance traits in the wild are costly and captive bred animals are likely to lose resistance in the absence of parasite infection due to a lack of acquired immune and stere-induced imunno-supression. Few studies, have, however, examined how captive and wild fish differ in their immune response to parasitism. The present study assesses differences in Gyrodactylus parasite trajectories and its effect on feeding between wild and ornamental strains of Trinidadian guppies, Poecilia reticulata, with varying MHC diversity and variation. 
