Rusts are fungal plant pathogens of the order Pucciniales causing plant fungal diseases.
In biology, a biological life cycle is a series of stages of the life of an organism, that begins as a zygote, often in an egg, and concludes as an adult that reproduces, producing an offspring in the form of a new zygote which then itself goes through the same series of stages, the process repeating in a cyclic fashion.
Coccidia (Coccidiasina) are a subclass of microscopic, spore-forming, single-celled obligate intracellular parasites belonging to the apicomplexan class Conoidasida. As obligate intracellular parasites, they must live and reproduce within an animal cell. Coccidian parasites infect the intestinal tracts of animals, and are the largest group of apicomplexan protozoa.
Microsporidia are a group of spore-forming unicellular parasites. These spores contain an extrusion apparatus that has a coiled polar tube ending in an anchoring disc at the apical part of the spore. They were once considered protozoans or protists, but are now known to be fungi, or a sister group to fungi. These fungal microbes are obligate eukaryotic parasites that use a unique mechanism to infect host cells. They have recently been discovered in a 2017 Cornell study to infect Coleoptera on a large scale. So far, about 1500 of the probably more than one million species are named. Microsporidia are restricted to animal hosts, and all major groups of animals host microsporidia. Most infect insects, but they are also responsible for common diseases of crustaceans and fish. The named species of microsporidia usually infect one host species or a group of closely related taxa. Approximately 10 percent of the species are parasites of vertebrates —several species, most of which are opportunistic, can infect humans, in whom they can cause microsporidiosis.
Myxobolus cerebralis is a myxosporean parasite of salmonids that causes whirling disease in farmed salmon and trout and also in wild fish populations. It was first described in rainbow trout in Germany in 1893, but its range has spread and it has appeared in most of Europe, the United States, South Africa, Canada and other countries from shipments of cultured and wild fish. In the 1980s, M. cerebralis was found to require a tubificid oligochaete to complete its life cycle. The parasite infects its hosts with its cells after piercing them with polar filaments ejected from nematocyst-like capsules. This infects the cartilage and possibly the nervous tissue of salmonids, causing a potentially lethal infection in which the host develops a black tail, spinal deformities, and possibly more deformities in the anterior part of the fish.
Enterocytozoon bieneusi is a species of the order Chytridiopsida which infects the intestinal epithelial cells. It is an obligate intracellular parasite.
Orchestia is a genus of amphipods in the family Talitridae. Species in Orchestia are parasitized by the Filozoan species Txikispora philomaios.
Entomophthora is a fungal genus in the family Entomophthoraceae. Species in this genus are parasitic on flies and other two-winged insects. The genus was circumscribed by German physician Johann Baptist Georg Wolfgang Fresenius (1808–1866) in 1856.
Filasterea is a proposed basal Filozoan clade of single-celled ameboid eukaryotes that includes Ministeria and Capsaspora. It is a sister clade to the Choanozoa in which the Choanoflagellatea and Animals appeared, originally proposed by Shalchian-Tabrizi et al. in 2008, based on a phylogenomic analysis with 78 genes. Filasterea was found to be the sister-group to the clade composed of Metazoa and Choanoflagellata within the Opisthokonta, a finding that has been further corroborated with additional, more taxon-rich, phylogenetic analyses.
Holozoa is a clade of organisms that includes animals and their closest single-celled relatives, but excludes fungi and all other organisms. Together they amount to more than 1.5 million species of purely heterotrophic organisms, including around 300 unicellular species. It consists of various subgroups, namely Metazoa and the protists Choanoflagellata, Filasterea, Pluriformea and Ichthyosporea. Along with fungi and some other groups, Holozoa is part of the Opisthokonta, a supergroup of eukaryotes. Choanofila was previously used as the name for a group similar in composition to Holozoa, but its usage is discouraged now because it excludes animals and is therefore paraphyletic.
Marteilia is a protozoan genus of organisms that are parasites of bivalves. It causes QX disease in Sydney rock oysters and Aber disease in European flat oysters. After being infected by Marteilia, bivalves lose pigmentation in their visceral tissue, and become emaciated.
The apusomonads are a group of protozoan zooflagellates that glide on surfaces, and mostly consume prokaryotes. They are of particular evolutionary interest because they appear to be the sister group to the Opisthokonts, the clade that includes both animals and fungi. Together with the Breviatea, these form the Obazoa clade.
Hematodinium is a genus of dinoflagellates. Species in this genus, such as Hematodinium perezi, the type species, are internal parasites of the hemolymph of crustaceans such as the Atlantic blue crab and Norway lobster. Species in the genus are economically damaging to commercial crab fisheries, including causing bitter crab disease in the large Tanner or snow crab fisheries of the Bering Sea.
An amoeba, often called an amoeboid, is a type of cell or unicellular organism with the ability to alter its shape, primarily by extending and retracting pseudopods. Amoebae do not form a single taxonomic group; instead, they are found in every major lineage of eukaryotic organisms. Amoeboid cells occur not only among the protozoa, but also in fungi, algae, and animals.
Pleistophora mulleri (Pfeiffer) Georgev. 1929 is a parasite of the amphipod Gammarus duebeni celticus. The parasite targets the freshwater shrimp species and has shown higher rates of cannibalism, which in turn, affects biological communities and ecology.
Nematocida parisii is a parasitic species of Microsporidia fungi found in wild isolates of the common nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans. The fungus forms spores and replicates in the intestines before leaving the host.
Haplozoon (/hæploʊ’zoʊən/) are unicellular endo-parasites, primarily infecting maldanid polychaetes. They belong to Dinoflagellata but differ from typical dinoflagellates. Most dinoflagellates are free-living and possess two flagella. Instead, Haplozoon belong to a 5% minority of parasitic dinoflagellates that are not free-living. Additionally, the Haplozoon trophont stage is particularly unique due to an apparent lack of flagella. The presence of flagella or remnant structures is the subject of ongoing research.
Euduboscquella (juˌduːboʊˈskwɛlə) is a genus of early branching dinoflagellates found in coastal waters around the globe. The members of this genus are all intracellular parasites that primarily infect Tintinnids. Euduboscquella are commonly found in marine environments, either infecting a host or in a resting stage in search of a new host, but there are a few freshwater and terrestrial species. Euduboscquella possess a multi-grooved shield separating their cytoplasm from the host’s cytoplasm, which is used by researchers to taxonomically identify them. The genus Euduboscquella contains nine species.
Tunicaraptor is a genus of marine microbial protists containing the single species Tunicaraptor unikontum, discovered in 2020 from marine waters of Chile. It is a lineage of predatorial flagellates closely related to animals. It has a rare feeding structure not seen in other opisthokonts.
Echinogammarus is a genus of amphipod crustaceans in the family Gammaridae. The status of many of its species is incertae sedis, but its type species is Echinogammarus berilloni. Species in Echinogammarus are parasitized by the Filozoan species Txikispora philomaios.
