Syndinium
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| Syndinium | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Clade: | Sar |
| Superphylum: | Alveolata |
| Phylum: | Dinoflagellata |
| Class: | Syndiniophyceae |
| Order: | Syndiniales |
| Family: | Syndiniaceae |
| Genus: | Syndinium Chatton |
| Type species | |
| Syndinium turbo Chatton | |
Syndinium is a cosmopolitan genus of parasitic dinoflagellates that infest and kill marine planktonic species of copepods and radiolarians.[1] Syndinium belongs to order Syndiniales, a candidate for the uncultured group I and II marine alveolates.[2] The lifecycle of Syndinium is not well understood beyond the parasitic and zoospore stages.[3]
Syndinium was first described by French biologist Édouard Chatton in 1910 as parasites of Paracalanus parvus, a marine copepod in the Mediterranean Sea.[1]
The first Syndinium species described was Syndinium turbo, which remains the most studied Syndinium species today. Due to there being 3 distinct zoospore morphologies for Synidium turbo, Chatton described it as 3 separate Syndinium species with the same host copepod species.[1] This was corrected in 2005 when Skovgaard et al. discovered that the 3 zoospore morphologies of Syndinium turbo are genetically identical.[1][3]
Throughout the 20th Century researchers encountered Syndinium species in a range of copepod and radiolarian in marine habitats ranging from the Clyde Sea to Port Phillip Bay, Australia.[3]
In the 2000s, Syndinium is given renewed attention from protist researchers thanks to the maturation of metagenomics techniques such as environmental sequencing, bypassing the need to capture and culture. In 2001 rRNA amplification marine plankton samples led to the tentative establishment of group I and group II marine alveolates, two novel lineages that have not yet been cultivated in the laboratory.[3] In 2005 researchers Skovgaard et al. performed phylogenetic analyses using small subunit ribosomal DNA and proposed that Syndiniophyceae, the class in which Syndinium belongs, is the group II marine alveolates.[3] By 2008 it was confirmed that the group I and II marine alveolates belong to the order Syndiniales, which includes the genus Syndinium.[2]
Habitat and ecology
Syndinium species have been recorded in a wide range of marine environments in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.[3] The range of Syndinium species may be increased by human activity, as genetic evidence of Syndinium along with other protist genera was discovered in the ballast water of oceangoing ships on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.[4]
As parasites, Syndinium infest planktonic copepods as well as radiolarians.[3] Syndinium infections are fatal, and many motile zoospores pour out of the exoskeleton after consuming the host from inside out.[1] Parasitism by Syndinium likely has a regulatory role on host populations, and in some conditions are responsible for sizable portion of host mortality rate.[5] As the life cycle of Syndinium species are not completely known, the ecological role of Syndinium in non-parasitic life stages are unclear.
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