Morphology of obligate ectosymbionts reveals <i>Paralaxus</i> gen. nov.: A new circumtropical genus of marine stilbonematine nematodes.

ABSTRACT: Stilbonematinae are a subfamily of conspicuous marine nematodes, distinguished by a coat of sulphur-oxidizing bacterial ectosymbionts on their cuticle. As most nematodes, the worm hosts have a relatively simple anatomy and few taxonomically informative characters, and this has resulted in numerous taxonomic reassignments and synonymizations. Recent studies using a combination of morphological and molecular traits have helped to improve the taxonomy of Stilbonematinae but also raised questions on the validity of several genera. Here, we describe a new circumtropically distributed genus Paralaxus (Stilbonematinae) with three species: Paralaxus cocos sp. nov., P. bermudensis sp. nov. and P. columbae sp. nov. We used single worm metagenomes to generate host 18S rRNA

SUBMITTER: Scharhauser F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8614112 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature