Parasites in Aquaculture

Dear Colleagues,

The journal Fishes is preparing a Special Issue entitled “Parasites in Aquaculture”.

Aquaculture plays a major role in global food security, which is one of the main concerns of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals. International aid and development agencies have promoted aquaculture as a promising sector for protein production, and it has been estimated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) that one billion people worldwide depend on fish proteins. Whilst aquaculture has been practiced for over 3000 years, the emerging infectious disease risk remains one of the major constraints to its sustainability, with potential major consequences on food security, global health and the economy. However, disease risk analysis requires extensive information and knowledge on the epidemiological factors of diseases, including lethality, infectivity and virulence. Moreover, parasitic infections contribute to a growing number of infections in aquaculture, but these infections are still understudied compared with bacterial and viral ones. There is a lack of information on the prevalence and diversity of parasitic infections in aquaculture production systems, and the absence of simple health monitoring methods has long hindered the implementation of streamlined infection risk management. However, infection risk assessment is attracting growing interest, notably for the implementation of (i) animal transport policies within and between countries and to develop legislative strategies in order to manage the risk of disease emergence, and (ii) health surveillance programmes.

This Special Issue collects studies that aim to boost our knowledge of all types of parasitic infections in the aquaculture sector. A wide range of aspects are welcome, such as the ecology, life cycle, host range, mechanisms of infection, prevalence and virulence of parasites infecting farmed aquatic animals.

Dr. Marine Combe
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fishes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• parasites
• farmed aquatic animals
• infections
• prevalence
• virulence
• diversity
• disease emergence
• disease ecology
• disease management