Identifying Potential Hosts of Short-Branch Microsporidia.

Annemie Doliwa, Micah Dunthorn, Erika Rassoshanska, Frédéric Mahé, David Bass, Camila Duarte Ritter

Microbial ecology 2021 Aug

filter terms:

Microsporidia are obligate parasites that are closely related to Fungi. While the widely known "long-branch" Microsporidia infect mostly metazoans, the hosts of "short-branch" Microsporidia are only partially characterized or not known at all. Here, we used network analyses from Neotropical rainforest soil metabarcoding data, to infer co-occurrences between environmental lineages of short-branch microsporidians and their potential hosts. We found significant co-occurrences with several taxa, especially with Apicomplexa, Cercozoa, and Fungi, as well as some Metazoa. Our results are the first step to identify potential hosts of the environmental lineages of short-branch microsporidians, which can be targeted in future molecular and microscopic studies. © 2021. The Author(s).

Citation

Annemie Doliwa, Micah Dunthorn, Erika Rassoshanska, Frédéric Mahé, David Bass, Camila Duarte Ritter. Identifying Potential Hosts of Short-Branch Microsporidia. Microbial ecology. 2021 Aug;82(2):549-553