African Diplostomum (sensu Dubois 1961): Minireview on taxonomy and biology

Freshwater fisheries has a significant contribution to development as an important source of human proteins as well as in sport fishing and aquarium. Despite their importance, both wild and aquaculture fish suffer from a problem of parasitism, notably Diplostomum species, causing fish mortalities particularly in fingerlings. Although a considerable effort in understanding Diplostomum species taxonomy, biology and control of fish parasites has been well developed in the northern hemisphere, the knowledge of these aspects in Africa is not clearly known. Therefore the present work reviews the aspects of biology and taxonomy of African Diplostomum. The traditional approach to uncover these aspects would be to complete the life cycles in the laboratory, which would lead to morphological characterisation of all life cycle stages. However, establishing and maintaining life cycles of Diplostomum species is difficult, laborious and expensive. Although, molecular methods have been proven to provide an alternative solution, are not common in Africa due to lack of equipment and expertise. However, improvement of some weaknesses for some studies like providing pictures or diagrams of the Diplostomum species found is recommended. In addition, for laboratories that have the capacity to do molecular analysis, the use of a familiar molecular marker like a barcode region could be a prospective development in future.