Just over 300 km off the Galician coast lies the Iberian abyssal plain, with depths reaching up to 1,500 meters. The presence of such deep areas so close to the coast facilitates the study of abyssal zones. Scientific cooperation between the University of Vigo and other Atlantic universities helps establish the foundations for understanding connectivity processes in an environment often described as the “Last Frontier,” about which very little is known regarding its biodiversity and broader biological processes.
Within the framework of the “Deep Ocean” project, Pablo Presa, researcher in the Marine Genetic Resources group of the Marine Research Center of the University of Vigo, is collaborating with the specialist in deep-sea fish parasites Marcelo Oliva, associate researcher at the Milenio Institute of Oceanography of the University of Concepción, and full professor at the University of Antofagasta, in order to evaluate the role of deep-sea fish parasites as “biological markers” of connectivity in the Deep Ocean.
On the occasion of his stay at the University of Vigo, Marcelo Oliva, presented on November 29, 2018 in the ECIMAT auditorium, two conferences on deep-ocean fish parasites “Marine fish parasites in the last frontier > 1500 m depth” and “Hake from South America: colonization routes inferred from their metazoan parasites”, in which he discussed his research work on metazoan parasites of deep-sea fish in northern Chile, in which he uses the by-catch of the artisanal fishery for the deep-sea cod Dissostichus eleginoides as a source of biological material. In the first conference, Marcelo made a general presentation of years of work on marine parasites, revealing to the attendees the surprises found, while in the second he focused on the phylogeny and the colonization process of the different hake species.
The “Deep Ocean” project is being developed by the Milenio Institute of Oceanography and led by Dr. Rubén Escribano of the University of Concepción, in collaboration with Luís A. Ñacari (Peru), Juan F. Espinola- Novelo (Mexico), PhD students in Applied Sciences with a focus on Coastal Marine Systems (University of Antofagasta and Fabiola Sepúlveda) and Florence Droguet (University of Bretagne Occidental – France). With the collaboration of the University of Vigo and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography, the above-mentioned researchers aim to clarify the colonization process of the South American hake through the genetic study of its parasites.
Both presentations are available at the following links:
- Parasites of marine fish in the last frontier > 1500 m depth, PDF 3.59 MB
- South American hakes: colonization pathways inferred from their metazoan parasites, PDF, 1.39 MB
