Abstract
Bacterial diseases are common in ornamental fish, more frequently associated with ubiquitous bacteria from the aquarium environment. The disease can lead to fish mortality and cause high economic losses if not rapidly controlled. The aim of this study was to identify the main causative bacterial agents of infection in ornamental fish with different clinical signs. A total of 126 freshwater fish, from 12 families and 38 species, with clinical signs were collected in a wholesaler in São Paulo, SP, Brazil. Samples were taken from the eye, skin ulcers, kidneys, and gills, plated on MacConkey, CHROMagar Orientation, and blood agar and incubated under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. Bacterial identification was performed by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. From the 126 studied animals, 112 were positive for bacterial isolation. Among the positive animals, 32.1% presented infection caused by a single bacterial species, while in the remaining 67.9%, two to six different bacterial species were identified. A total of 259 bacterial strains were obtained and classified among 46 bacterial species. The species of higher frequency were Aeromonas veronii (26.3%), Aeromonas hydrophilla (16.2%), Shewanella putrefaciens (7.3%), Citrobacter freundii (8.1%), Vibrio albensis (5.8%), and Klebsiella pneumoniae (4.2%). MALDI-TOF MS showed to be a rapid method for diagnosis of bacterial disease outbreaks in ornamental fish establishments.
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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Funding
This study was financed in part by the Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel – Brazil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001 and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). PHMC was a recipient of the CAPES fellowship (grant 1808006). VTMG was the recipient of the CNPq fellowship (grant 400267/2017-9). LZM was a recipient of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) fellowship (grant 2016/25745-7). AMM is a CNPq fellow (grant 310736/2018-8).
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Conceptualization, P.C., L.M., S.B., and A.M.; methodology, P.C., L.M., C.O., V.G., A.S., M.B., M.S., S.B., and A.M; formal analysis, P.C., L.M., C.O., V.G., A.S., M.B., M.S., S.B., and A.M.; investigation, P.C., L.M., C.O., V.G., A.S., M.B., M.S., S.B., and A.M.; resources, P.C., S.B., and A.M.; data curation, P.C., C.O., L.M., and A.M.; writing—original draft preparation, P.C. and L..; writing—review and editing, P.C., L.M., C.O., S.B., and A.M.; visualization, P.C., L.M., C.O., V.G., A.S., M.B., M.S., S.B., and A.M.; supervision, S.B. and A.M.; project administration, P.C., L.M., and A.M.; funding acquisition, A.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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for this article is available online (Tables S1 and S2; Fig. S1). Table S1presents the distribution of studied fish families and species according to infection type (caused by a single bacterial species or mixed infection). Table S2 presents the frequency distribution of identified bacterial species. Fig. S1 illustrate the cluster analysis of infections profiles, in which the black blocks correspond to the detected bacterial species and the colored blocks correspond to infection profiles (F1 - F66). (DOCX 276 kb)
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Cardoso, P.H.M., Moreno, L.Z., de Oliveira, C.H. et al. Main bacterial species causing clinical disease in ornamental freshwater fish in Brazil. Folia Microbiol 66, 231–239 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12223-020-00837-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12223-020-00837-x