Harmless sea snail parasite causes mass mortalities in numerous commercial scallop populations in the northern hemisphere
Apicomplexans comprise a group of unicellular, often highly pathogenic, obligate parasites exploiting either one or two hosts to complete a full reproductive cycle. For decades, various scallop populations have suffered cyclical mass mortality events, several of which shown to be caused by apicomple...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:5959874 2023-05-15T17:33:49+02:00 Harmless sea snail parasite causes mass mortalities in numerous commercial scallop populations in the northern hemisphere Kristmundsson, Árni Freeman, Mark Andrew 2018-05-18 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5959874/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29777183 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-26158-1 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5959874/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29777183 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-26158-1 © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. CC-BY Article Text 2018 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-26158-1 2018-05-27T01:32:38Z Apicomplexans comprise a group of unicellular, often highly pathogenic, obligate parasites exploiting either one or two hosts to complete a full reproductive cycle. For decades, various scallop populations have suffered cyclical mass mortality events, several of which shown to be caused by apicomplexan infections. We report the first dual mollusc life cycle for an apicomplexan: a species highly pathogenic in various pectinid bivalve species, but apathogenic when infecting the common whelk as Merocystis kathae. The sympatric distribution of the common whelk and scallops in the North Atlantic makes transmission extremely effective, occurring via the gastrointestinal tract, by scavenging and predation in whelks and unselective filter feeding in scallops. Infective sporozoites from whelks utilize scallops´ haemocytes to reach muscular tissue, where asexual reproduction occurs. Phylogenetically, this apicomplexan is robustly placed within the Aggregatidae and its inclusion in analyses supports a common ancestry with other basal invertebrate apicomplexans. Scallops seem able to regulate low-level infections of M. kathae as they exist in normal populations while epizootics occur during high levels of exposure from locally infected whelks. A targeted removal of whelks from valuable scallop grounds would be advantageous to minimize the occurrence of M. kathae epizootics and prevent damaging economic losses. Text North Atlantic PubMed Central (PMC) Scientific Reports 8 1 |
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Article Kristmundsson, Árni Freeman, Mark Andrew Harmless sea snail parasite causes mass mortalities in numerous commercial scallop populations in the northern hemisphere |
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Apicomplexans comprise a group of unicellular, often highly pathogenic, obligate parasites exploiting either one or two hosts to complete a full reproductive cycle. For decades, various scallop populations have suffered cyclical mass mortality events, several of which shown to be caused by apicomplexan infections. We report the first dual mollusc life cycle for an apicomplexan: a species highly pathogenic in various pectinid bivalve species, but apathogenic when infecting the common whelk as Merocystis kathae. The sympatric distribution of the common whelk and scallops in the North Atlantic makes transmission extremely effective, occurring via the gastrointestinal tract, by scavenging and predation in whelks and unselective filter feeding in scallops. Infective sporozoites from whelks utilize scallops´ haemocytes to reach muscular tissue, where asexual reproduction occurs. Phylogenetically, this apicomplexan is robustly placed within the Aggregatidae and its inclusion in analyses supports a common ancestry with other basal invertebrate apicomplexans. Scallops seem able to regulate low-level infections of M. kathae as they exist in normal populations while epizootics occur during high levels of exposure from locally infected whelks. A targeted removal of whelks from valuable scallop grounds would be advantageous to minimize the occurrence of M. kathae epizootics and prevent damaging economic losses. |
format |
Text |
author |
Kristmundsson, Árni Freeman, Mark Andrew |
author_facet |
Kristmundsson, Árni Freeman, Mark Andrew |
author_sort |
Kristmundsson, Árni |
title |
Harmless sea snail parasite causes mass mortalities in numerous commercial scallop populations in the northern hemisphere |
title_short |
Harmless sea snail parasite causes mass mortalities in numerous commercial scallop populations in the northern hemisphere |
title_full |
Harmless sea snail parasite causes mass mortalities in numerous commercial scallop populations in the northern hemisphere |
title_fullStr |
Harmless sea snail parasite causes mass mortalities in numerous commercial scallop populations in the northern hemisphere |
title_full_unstemmed |
Harmless sea snail parasite causes mass mortalities in numerous commercial scallop populations in the northern hemisphere |
title_sort |
harmless sea snail parasite causes mass mortalities in numerous commercial scallop populations in the northern hemisphere |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5959874/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29777183 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-26158-1 |
genre |
North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5959874/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29777183 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-26158-1 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
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CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-26158-1 |
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