Conference Agenda

Bali, an Indonesian island located at the centre of the Coral triangle, is considered a marine biodiversity hotspot; however, the diversity and taxonomy of many parasitic groups in fishes remain poorly understood. Myxosporeans a taxonomically diverse group, are obligate, spore-forming parasitic cnidarians. Their true diversity is likely much higher than currently described, due to cryptic species and limited number of studies in region. To date, no myxosporean species have been formally described from Bali. This study aims to identify myxozoan infections in marine fishes from Bali. Gall bladder and muscle samples from 18 host families, including commercially significant families Carangidae, Siganidae, Lutjanidae and Scombridae, were obtained from the Queensland Museum research collection. Morphological traits of myxospores were described using light microscopy following the guidelines of Lom & Arthur (1989). DNA was extracted from spore preparations, and ribosomal DNA regions (18S-28S) were amplified using universal and myxosporean-specific primers. PCR amplicons were prepared for long-read sequencing (Oxford Nanopore PromethION), and the resulting sequences were analysed using Geneious Prime. Based on morphological and molecular approaches, these samples are provisionally assigned to the genera Kudoa spp. and Ceratomyxa spp., pending formal description. This dataset will provide the first comprehensive baseline for myxosporean in Bali.