Worms About Town: a citizen science project discovers microsporidian parasites of nematodes through environmental sampling
Jonathan Tersigni, Edward B James, Aaron W Reinke · 2026
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Description
Jonathan Tersigni, Edward B James, and Aaron W Reinke describe the first year of Worms About Town in a 2026 report. The citizen science project hunts microsporidian parasites of wild nematodes around Toronto. Microsporidia are fungal parasites of many animals. The laboratory worm C. elegans offers a model host. Yet almost nothing was known about how geography, season, or substrate shape natural infections. Volunteers collected samples from plant material across the city during 2024.
Of 127 samples, 60 contained wild nematodes and four carried the parasites. Two finds were Nematocida homosporus, a known generalist. The other two belonged to undescribed species in genera distantly related to human-infecting microsporidia. The survey also turned up C. elegans itself, never before reported wild in Ontario. One parasite isolate could infect a laboratory strain. The authors present the network as a repeatable framework for studying this host and parasite system.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Jonathan Tersigni, Edward B James, Aaron W Reinke |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 34 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |