Honors College Thesis
 

Studying the ancient parasitic cnidarian, Sphaerospora elegans, leads to better understanding of oligochaete diversity and myxozoan discovery

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  • Myxozoans are microscopic parasites, related to corals and jellyfish. Most Myxozoa probably have two-host lifecycles that require a vertebrate (typically fish) and invertebrate (annelid or bryozoan). However no life cycle is known from the Sphaerospora lineage. I hypothesized that the life cycle of Sphaerospora elegans, a myxozoan parasite of three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) requires an alternate annelid host. I sampled fish and annelids from a creek known to have the parasite. PCR and DNA sequencing demonstrated that the fish currently are infected. I quantified annelid diversity in the creek by establishing 18 unique morphological groups and sorting oligochaetes into these groups, then sequencing representatives from each group to test morphological categorization versus DNA identity. DNA resolved the 18 morpho-groups into 16 nominal species, from 10 genera and two families. Using visual and molecular screening, I discovered two (of 674) oligochaetes had myxozoan infections: neither infection was S. elegans. Neither myxozoan could be identified by sequence matches (>98%) to known species: the most similar myxozoans were Myxidium truttae (96%) and Myxoboulus arrabonensis (92%). This method validates the direct examination of annelids to discover myxozoan infections, but could not preclude involvement of a non-annelid hosts in the life cycle of S. elegans. Key Words: Myxozoan, sphaerospora, parasite, annelid, worm
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  • College of Science SURE Science Program
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