Corallicolids: The elusive coral-infecting apicomplexans

[rgulrich]

Randy, apologies again if this isn't the best place for my occasional research reference, but it seemed like a good home for this article.

A little light reading I came across that some might find of interest.

Originally published in 2021.

Corallicolids: The elusive coral-infecting apicomplexans

journals.plos.org

Of particular interest (to me, at least) is how they came across these - not by searching directly for them per se, but by peripheral research. And one guess as to where they initially found them...

Hope some find this of use and possibly the basis for further research (identification and treatment approaches?).
Cheers,
Ray

 

[tzabor10]

Interesting

 

[taricha]

Thanks. that's super weird! That's one of the stranger "none of the above" organisms that I'd ever heard of.
It's not a bacteria or ciliate or worm or crustacean or nudibranch.
It's like an algae that found a niche as parasite and gave up on photosynthesis.

Also they find no evidence that "infection" of corals is a harmful one in the way we'd label an "infection."

"Agents of coral disease?
Very little is known about corallicolid biology or their effects on the coral host. Given what we know from their apicomplexan relatives, it is unlikely that corallicolids are greatly beneficial to the coral, but there is also no evidence they are particularly pathogenic. In some coral species, the relationship between corallicolids and corals begins as early as the host larval stage [21]. Preliminary analyses of environmental sequence data have been compared with the observed health of the host tissue and did not find a strong correlation between the presence of corallicolids and recognisable disease [18,33]. However, the situation is undoubtedly more complex."

 

[JoJosReef]

Haha, I know the second author of the Nature paper referenced (15) personally! Never thought I'd see Javi showing up here.

Apicomplexans are a special interest of mine. I would be extremely surprised if there were anything beneficial about a coral hosting apicomplexan parasites. But then again, the ocean is a spectacular place! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯