ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Cryptic infection of a broad taxonomic and geographic diversity of tadpoles by Perkinsea protists.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 81 citations in OpenAlex.
- Global perspective of environmental distribution and diversity of Perkinsea (Alveolata) explored by a meta-analysis of eDNA surveys.Scientific reports · 2023Pooled it
- Tadpole Doctor: a UK-based citizen science project that identifies novel Perkinsea clades closely related to candidate amphibian pathogens.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Assessing the spatiotemporal distribution of bufonid herpesvirus 1 (BfHV1) in Europe.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Abiotic and biotic factors jointly influence the contact and environmental transmission of a generalist pathogen.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- The amphibian immune system.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Beyond the limits of the unassigned protist microbiome: inferring large-scale spatio-temporal patterns of Syndiniales marine parasites.ISME communications · 2023Article
- Co-infection of two eukaryotic pathogens within clam populations in Arcachon Bay.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- A diversified and segregated mRNA spliced-leader system in the parasitic Perkinsozoa.Open biology · 2022Article
- Article
- Temporal dynamics of freshwater planktonic parasites inferred using a DNA metabarcoding time-series.Parasitology · 2021Article
- Host-multiparasite interactions in amphibians: a review.Parasites & vectors · 2021Review
- Expanded host and geographic range of tadpole associations with the Severe Perkinsea Infection group.Biology letters · 2021Article
- A novel duplex qPCR assay for stepwise detection of multiple Perkinsea protistan infections of amphibian tissues.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
- A Novel Parasitoid of Marine Dinoflagellates,Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Emerging Parasitic Protists: The Case of Perkinsea.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Review
- New Perkinsea Parasitoids of Dinoflagellates Distantly Related to Parviluciferaceae Members.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Genetic tool development in marine protists: emerging model organisms for experimental cell biology.Nature methods · 2020Article
- Diverse alveolate infections of tadpoles, a new threat to frogs?PLoS pathogens · 2020Review
- Expression Changes of MHC and Other Immune Genes in Frog Skin during Ontogeny.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2020Article
- Environmental Parameters and Substrate Type Drive Microeukaryotic Community Structure During Short-Term Experimental Colonization in Subtropical Eutrophic Freshwaters.Frontiers in microbiology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 7 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The decline of amphibian populations, particularly frogs, is often cited as an example in support of the claim that Earth is undergoing its sixth mass extinction event. Amphibians seem to be particularly sensitive to emerging diseases (e.g., fungal and viral pathogens), yet the diversity and geographic distribution of infectious agents are only starting to be investigated. Recent work has linked a previously undescribed protist with mass-mortality events in the United States, in which infected frog tadpoles have an abnormally enlarged yellowish liver filled with protist cells of a presumed parasite. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that this infectious agent was affiliated with the Perkinsea: a parasitic group within the alveolates exemplified by Perkinsus sp., a "marine" protist responsible for mass-mortality events in commercial shellfish populations. Using small subunit (SSU) ribosomal DNA (rDNA) sequencing, we developed a targeted PCR protocol for preferentially sampling a clade of the Perkinsea. We tested this protocol on freshwater environmental DNA, revealing a wide diversity of Perkinsea lineages in these environments. Then, we used the same protocol to test for Perkinsea-like lineages in livers of 182 tadpoles from multiple families of frogs. We identified a distinct Perkinsea clade, encompassing a low level of SSU rDNA variation different from the lineage previously associated with tadpole mass-mortality events. Members of this clade were present in 38 tadpoles sampled from 14 distinct genera/phylogroups, from five countries across three continents. These data provide, to our knowledge, the first evidence that Perkinsea-like protists infect tadpoles across a wide taxonomic range of frogs in tropical and temperate environments, including oceanic islands.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.