Abstract
Hematodinium is a parasitic dinoflagellate with a wide distribution along the European coastline. We investigated whether Hematodinium occurs in the Wadden Sea, a large tidal flat system spanning the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark, where to date no records exist. In total, we investigated eight different species from six sites at the southern (Texel, the Netherlands) and northern (Sylt, Germany) ends of the system. Based on microscopic hemolymph screening, we did not detect Hematodinium in any of the 1252 investigated individuals. An extensive additional literature review revealed 1489 Hematodinium records in Europe from 14 crustacean species, most locally occurring at high prevalence. This makes our finding of lack of Hematodinium infections surprising and suggests that environmental factors such as a lower salinity may limit the distribution of Hematodinium at the investigated locations at both ends of the Wadden Sea. However, whether the entire Wadden Sea represents a distributional gap for Hematodinium remains to be investigated.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during the current study are available in the Version 1. 4TU.ResearchData. dataset. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.4121/3676d955-69c4-489c-b961-f59eade2e55d.
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Acknowledgements
This study was financially supported by the “Joint Training Program” from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Thanks to Dr. Karin Troost in Wageningen Marine Research for kind assistance during sample collection.
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This study was funded by the “Joint Training Program” from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, and data collection and analysis were performed by QH, AMW, and DWT. The first draft of the manuscript was written by QH and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Table S1.
Hematodinium survey in the Wadden Sea. Table S2. Hematodinium records in Europe as noted in the literature. Table S3. The counts of testing methods in Hematodinium records. CP: color and pleopod; SA: smear assay; PCR: polymerase chain reaction; HIS: histology; ELISA: enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay; TEM: transmission electron microscope; IMM: immunoassay; WB: Western blot; IFAT: indirect fluorescent antibody test. (XLSX 97 KB)
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Huang, Q., Waser, A.M., Li, C. et al. Lack of Hematodinium microscopic detection in crustaceans at the northern and southern ends of the Wadden Sea and an update of its distribution in Europe. Mar Biol 171, 63 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-023-04381-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-023-04381-3