Occurrence of Trichodinid Ciliophorans (Ciliophora: Peritrichida) in the freshwater fishes of the river Churni with description of Trichodina glossogobae sp. nov. in West Bengal, India.

Between January 2011 and March 2011 occurrence of trichodinid ciliophorans were studied in the freshwater fishes of the river Churni. The biodiversity survey revealed presence of a new species of the genus Trichodina (Ehrenberg 1830) infesting Glossogobius giuris (Hamilton-Buchanan). Another freshwater fish Labeo bata (Hamilton 1822) were found to be infested with two species of the genus Tripartiella Lom 1959: Tripartiella bulbosa (Davis 1947) Lom 1959 and T. copiosa Lom 1959. Adhesive disc size of the new Trichodina species is small measuring 30.6-46.9 (36.2 ± 3.9) μm in diameter. The centre of the disc is finely granular and transforms into dark when impregnated with silver. The overall prevalence of this species is 15.6% (12/77). Tripartiella bulbosa and T. copiosa are very small sized ciliophorans, measuring 16.7-23.8 (20.6 ± 2.2) μm and 15.2-22.4 (19.7 ± 1.9) μm in diameter, respectively.