FISHERIES STUDIES SHOULD CONSIDER THE EFFECTS OF FISH PARASITES

摘要

The examples provided here highlight the necessity for integrating parasites into fisheries studies; they have the potential to explain much of the individual variability in data that assist interpretation of population and community level data. These aspects are of such fundamental importance that a basic parasite check of fish should arguably be as routine in fisheries surveys as identifying species and measuring lengths. Thus, acknowledging the influence of parasites on fish and incorporating them as an explanatory variable in data analyses will represent a major step in improving the quality and reliability of fisheries research.