Polyopisthocotylea are a sub-class of Monogenea parasites that due to their small size and complexity in body form and clamp size/morphology they have not recieved as much attention as they should have. Polyopisthocotylea infect a wide range of fish species, specifically on the gills of marine fish.
The charactersitic that defines different species from each other comes from the morphology of the clamp structures, but due to the small sizes ranging from 0.001mm-0.05mm this has been very difficult to study in depth and has lead to many reported inconsistincies in different papers.
World wide there are about 40 known families and over 380 genera currently known to us, but this number is believed to be only a small fraction of the true number.
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