Manatees May Carry Half a Million Microscopic Hitchhikers - The New York Times

Unexpected species of nematodes, some of them new to science, were found living on the skin of the marine mammals.

A study published last month in Scientific Reports presents the native Florida manatee and its skin as the latest evidence of this wormy universe.

The study reports that three nematode species — two previously unknown — were found in skin samples from Florida manatees.

One in 2011 described an “extraordinarily” long-tailed diplogastrid nematode, Cutidiplogaster manati, found in skin lesions on West Indian manatees in an aquarium in Okinawa, Japan.

In 2013, they began collecting samples from Florida manatees in the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge, and the project became Mr.

The new nematodes had large teeth — maybe for eating other nematodes, or for “something tricky,” such as splitting open diatom algae and consuming their insides, said Robin Giblin-Davis, a recently retired nematologist at the University of Florida and a co-author of the study.

The nematodes, the study suggests, are specially adapted to flourish in this decaying micro-landscape, where structures on the skin would be as tall to them as trees are to people.

All three manatee nematodes were found on all of the manatees sampled in 2018 and 2019, but no skin lesions were found; the authors concluded that it was unlikely that the nematodes were hurting their hosts