DNA Barcoding of Estuarine Parasites

Marine parasites are critical components of food webs and serve as indicators of ecosystem health, yet most are underrepresented in genetic repositories. Given their small size and complex life cycles (often involving multiple hosts), most parasites are difficult to identify using morphology alone, which presents challenges for research in parasite ecology and evolution. Contained here are targeted loci sequenced from parasites collected from taxonomically diverse hosts within the Chesapeake Bay as part of ongoing research at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. These samples should fill key genetic gaps in GenBank, the National Parasite Collection, and the Chesapeake Bay Barcode Initiative to include estuarine parasitic taxa. This NCBI BioProject contains DNA barcode records that were generated with financial and technical support from the Federally funded Smithsonian Institution Barcode Network with use of facilities at the Laboratories of Analytical Biology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.