Discovery of intermediate hosts for two species of blood flukes Cardicola orientalis and Cardicola forsteri (Trematoda: Aporocotylidae) infecting Pacific bluefin tuna in Japan.

Fish blood flukes (Aporocotylidae) are important pathogens of farmed finfish around the world. Among them, Cardicola spp. infecting farmed tuna are considered to be serious threats to tuna farming and have received tremendous attention.

Tiny sea anemone from the Lower Cambrian of China.

Background: Abundant fossils from the Ediacaran and Cambrian showing cnidarian grade grossly suggest that cnidarian diversification occurred earlier than that of other eumetazoans. However, fossils of possible soft-bodied polyps are scanty and modern corals are dated back only to the Middle Triassic, although molecular phylogenetic results support the idea that anthozoans represent the first major branch of the Cnidaria. Because of difficulties in taxonomic assignments owing to imperfect preservation of fossil cnidarian candidates, little is known about forms ancestral to those of living groups.

Identification of palytoxin as a principle which causes morphological changes in rat 3Y1 cells in the zoanthid Palythoa aff. margaritae.

A very potent cell-bursting principle was isolated from the extract of the zoanthid Palythoa aff. margaritae. The compound was identified as palytoxin by comparing the spectral data and HPLC profile with those of an authentic sample.