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Introducing the World List of Myxozoa
Added on 2025-07-31 16:07:28 by Dekeyzer, Stefanie
Today is the launch day for the World List of Myxozoa, a Global Species Database under the umbrella of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS).Class Myxozoa is a group of obligate parasites consisting of over 3000 species, representing about 15 % of the known cnidarian biodiversity. Myxozoans have complex life cycles that involve invertebrate and vertebrate hosts. Definitive hosts are annelids and bryozoans. Fishes represent the majority of intermediate hosts, although amphibians, reptiles, birds, monogeneans and mammals are also parasitized, In general, myxozoans infect a broad diversity of host species, but many individual species show high levels of host and organ specificity. Some species cause serious damage to their hosts, which may be important to humans when these hosts have economic and ecological value.
The World list of Myxozoa started in 2024 as a single source of myxozoan taxa and their synonyms. It is part of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), a global initiative to provide an online register of scientific names of all marine organisms and their non-marine relatives. It is continuously updated.
Users can find the taxonomic classification of myxozoans, with valid and invalid names of families, genera and species. The List provides the original source in which they were published (if known) and additional references that detail geographic range and host diversity. It also reports on their environment, distinguishing between freshwater, marine, brackish, and terrestrial habitats.
The Data Management Team (DMT) is supported by LifeWatch Belgium, part of the E-Science European LifeWatch Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research. LifeWatch is a distributed virtual laboratory, used for different aspects of biodiversity research. The Species Information Backbone of LifeWatch aims at bringing together taxonomic and species-related data and at filling the gaps in our knowledge.
Figure: Schematic myxozoan life cycle (excluding Malacosporea), which requires both a vertebrate and an invertebrate host, with two morphologically distinct waterborne spore stages. From: Atkinson, S. D., Bartholomew, J. L., & Lotan, T. (2018). Myxozoans: ancient metazoan parasites find a home in phylum Cnidaria. Zoology, 129, 66-68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zool.2018.06.005 (source in WoRMS).
The World list of Myxozoa started in 2024 as a single source of myxozoan taxa and their synonyms. It is part of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), a global initiative to provide an online register of scientific names of all marine organisms and their non-marine relatives. It is continuously updated.
Users can find the taxonomic classification of myxozoans, with valid and invalid names of families, genera and species. The List provides the original source in which they were published (if known) and additional references that detail geographic range and host diversity. It also reports on their environment, distinguishing between freshwater, marine, brackish, and terrestrial habitats.
The Data Management Team (DMT) is supported by LifeWatch Belgium, part of the E-Science European LifeWatch Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research. LifeWatch is a distributed virtual laboratory, used for different aspects of biodiversity research. The Species Information Backbone of LifeWatch aims at bringing together taxonomic and species-related data and at filling the gaps in our knowledge.
Figure: Schematic myxozoan life cycle (excluding Malacosporea), which requires both a vertebrate and an invertebrate host, with two morphologically distinct waterborne spore stages. From: Atkinson, S. D., Bartholomew, J. L., & Lotan, T. (2018). Myxozoans: ancient metazoan parasites find a home in phylum Cnidaria. Zoology, 129, 66-68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zool.2018.06.005 (source in WoRMS).
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