🚨🧵Out now in @ISMEJournal!. We find abundant corallicolid sequences within bearded fireworms across reefs and years in Curaçao 🇨🇼!. 🪱🪸 This is the first report of corallicolids inside a non-anthozoan host! .#Protists #Corals.

🙏 Thanks to all co-authors: Tatsuya Unuma, Joana Krause-Massaguer (@Joanakrause99), and Javier del Campo (@fonamental /@delCampoLab)!

Apostichocystis is named for its host (Apostichopus japonicus), while the species epithet gudetama draws from the Japanese pop icon Gudetama, a lazy egg, highlighting the parasite’s link to the ovaries. The name captures both ecological context and cultural ties to Japan 🇯🇵.

🌊 A. gudetama’s close relationship to these marine host–associated clades has interesting implications for apicoplast evolution, which we hope to explore further in the future ☀️.

🧬 rrn operon phylogeny revealed this parasite to be closely related to apicomplexans of marine fish 🐟 and corals 🪸, while organelle phylogenetics hint at a closer relationship with Eleutheroschizon, an apicomplexan associated with a marine Polychaete 🪱.

🆕 Out now in JEM (@JEukMicro)! Using gene and organelle phylogenies from recovered cysts, we describe Apostichocystis gudetama, an apicomplexan parasite found in the ovaries of the Japanese sea cucumber 🥚🥒🇯🇵

This work was co-led by me and @BradWeilerDives under the guidance of @fonamental. Huge thanks to our amazing collaborators: Candace Grimes, Morelia Trznadel, Mark Vermeij, & Patrick Keeling! 🙏.

🌟 Taken together, we suggest fireworms are a reservoir and potential vector for corallicolids, moving parasites between coral hosts via feces 🪱💩🪸. This deepens our understanding of coral reef host-parasite interactions and reveals exciting new corallicolid ecology!.

🧪 To dig deeper, we teamed up with Dr. Candace Grimes, who amplified 16S rRNA genes in fireworms across body compartments back in 2017. With this data we confirmed a high corallicolid apicoplast presence in the gut and feces of worms 🪱💩.

🔎 We found corallicolids were abundant in all sampled worms — and distinct from the ones in the corals the worms fed on!.

🔥 This exciting discovery started with an interesting observation: corallivourous fireworms feeding along the disease line of a black band diseased Orbicella annularis colony! The @delCampoLab team spotted this while investigating coral diseases in partnership with CARMABI🧪🏝️

RT @delCampoLab: We are glad to announce that #MidweekMicrobe is back! Today we are celebrating the International Children's Book Day coinc….

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RT @biorxiv_micrbio: Fireworms (Hermodice carunculata) are a reservoir and potential vector for coral-infecting apicomplexans https://t.co/….

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RT @fonamental: Happy to be part of this study led by Patrick Keeling's lab 😀 . Phylogenomics of coral-infecting corallicolids reveal mult….