Title: Epidemiological and advanced diagnostic studies of isopod species infesting different fish hosts and localities in Egypt

Biography:

Nisreen Ezz El Dien Mahmoud has completed her PhD in 1994. He works as a Professor of Parasitology in Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Cairo University - Egypt. She is a leading specialist of fish parasites. Her scientific interests include problems related to fish parasitic diseases and pollution in freshwater and marine aquacultures. She has published more than 50 papers in reputed journals. She is the head of the Egyptian society of parasitology of aquatic organisms, also a member of Egyptian Society of Environment and Aquatic Animal Health, The Zoological Society A. R. E, The Fish Committee of the General Organization for Veterinary Services, Egypt, The Fish Committee for the solution of Lake Naser fish helminthes problems, Egypt, The Egyptian Society of Veterinary Parasitology. She is an editor and reviewer in many scientific journals. She is a principle investigator of the project (Epidemiological studies on Isopod infestation among marine fishes in Egypt with preliminary control and prevention trials). 

Abstract

Isopods are protandrous hermaphrodite ectoparasitic crustaceans on the body surface, fins, and in buccal or branchial cavities of freshwater and marine fish species. Cymothoid species are serious parasites and currently affecting many lakes and fish farms all over the World. In Egypt, the isopod infestation was detected among fishes in Lake Qarun (an inland closed basin of salt water at Fayoum governorates) as invasion problem, also isopod species were detected in Lake Manzala and in some northern fish farms along the Mediterranean sea.  The present work was designed  to investigate the epidemiology of isopods among fish species in different localities and deal with the molecular identification , sequencing and phylogenetic analysis of  the different morph metric species that isolated from different hosts and localities in Egypt during our surveillance studies. SDS-PAGE was conducted on crude antigens prepared from the investigated isopod species where the polypeptide bands with their molecular weight were detected to be used in diagnosis and protection against isopod species using Western blot. The current work highlighted the epidemiology of isopod infestation in Egypt and provided a guide for diagnostic and control strategy development and application.