The taxonomy of myxosporeans was traditionally dependent solely upon the spore morphological and morphometric data. Intensive reports of intraspecific morphological variation, however, are increasingly challenging the taxonomic approaches for myxosporeans. In the present work, the morphological pleomorphism of myxospores of Myxobolus drjagini (Akhmerov, 1954) was observed. More interestingly, all of these pleomorphic myxospores occurred in the same plasmodium of M. drjagini, which refutes the previous hypothesis that morphological variation of M. drjagini was derived from its responses to differences in nutrition and immunological responses associated with different host tissues. Bearing the intraspecific morphometric and morphotype variation in mind, the combination of morphological, ecological and molecular data should be applied to the species identification and delimitation for myxosporeans. This is the first reported myxobolid species with high pleomorphic myxospores which are present in the same plasmodium.

Corresponding author

Key Laboratory of Healthy Freshwater Aquaculture Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and Key Laboratory of Fish Health and Nutrition of Zhejiang Province Zhejiang Institute of Freshwater Fisheries Huzhou Zhejiang Province China

Laboratory for Marine Biology and Biotechnology Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology Qingdao Shandong Province China

School of Marine Science and Engineering Qingdao Agricultural University Qingdao Shandong Province China

State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology and Key Laboratory of Aquaculture Disease Control Institute of Hydrobiology Chinese Academy of Sciences Wuhan Hubei Province China

These authors contributed equally to this work

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