There ’s a newfangled leech infecting tadpoles , filling their livers with thousands of foreign cell . And they are found all over the cosmos in both tropic and temperate regions alike .
Frogs and salamanders are among the most threatened brute group on the satellite right now , with 42 % of all amphibious speciesdeclining in population . And with these downslope come emerging infective disease . An amphibian people mortality rate event in the U.S. in 2006 has been linked to a pathogen that ’s closely related to a mollusk parasite calledPerkinsus . Infected tadpoles of the southern leopard frog ( Lithobates sphenocephalus ) have an abnormally enlarged , yellowish liver fill with chiliad of spherical cellular telephone , in all probability from the parasitic Perkinsea family of microorganisms calledprotists . So far , threePerkinsusspecies have been described parasitizing marine pelecypod , plankton , and algae .
Using molecular method , an international team lead byUniversity of Exeter ’s Aurélie ChambouvetandThomas Richardswanted to evaluate the prevalence and diverseness of Perkinsea - like parasites infecting polliwog across the planet . Using a particular kind of sequencing known as small fractional monetary unit ribosomal DNA sequence , they were able to grow a targeted communications protocol that screens for Perkinsea . To test their protocol , they sampled fresh water environmental DNA from U.K. and French Guiana water hoi polloi and found a wide diversity of Perkinsea lineages .
Then they used the same protocol to test for Perkinsea - like ancestry in the livers of 182 tadpoles from multiple phratry of frogs living in six country : U.K. , French Guiana , Tanzania , Cameroon , the island of São Tomé , and the Czech Republic . They discover previously unidentified Perkinsea - similar sponge in 38 polliwog taste from five of those land ( all but the Czech Republic ) . These span three Continent and include both tropical and temperate part , as well as an pelagic island .
The freshly discovered sponger are dissimilar from the Perkinsea - like pathogen responsible for for the 2006 amphibian mass death rate issue in Georgia – which suggests that multiple Perkinsea pedigree are infecting tadpoles .
These findings , published inProceedings of the Academy of Sciencesthis week , are the first grounds that Perkinsea - like protists are infecting a broad diversity of tadpoles occupy a salmagundi of geographical ranges .
