27/10/2026
The 2024 winner of the Trager Award for best paper is “Identification of a new gregarine parasite associated with mass mortality events of freshwater pearl mussels (Margaritifera margaritifera) in Sweden” by Anders Alfjorden and colleagues.
Apicomplexans are perhaps the world’s most prevalent and harmful parasites, causing massive human and environmental damage. In this paper, Alfjorden and colleagues examined the possibility of parasitic infection associated with mortality in an ecologically important freshwater bivalve. They identified and described three new species of gregarines, an under-explored and under-appreciated apicomplexan group. Through molecular, microscopic, and histological methods, it was shown that these gregarine species were specifically associated with the infection.
This paper is an excellent example of using multiple complementary approaches to address an important question and showing that protistology can be at the same time foundational and applied.
Read the paper ⤵️
Identification of a new gregarine parasite associated with mass mortality events of freshwater pearl mussels (Margaritifera margaritifera) in Sweden
Anders Alfjorden, Ioana Onut-Brännström, Niklas Wengström, Arni Kristmundsson, Mahwash Jamy, B. David Persson, Fabien Burki
Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jeu.13021
