An unexpected tenant: contamination in a Physeter catodon (Physeteridae, Artiodactyla) genome indicates undescribed species of Sarcocystis Lankester, 1882 (Sarcocystidae, Eucoccidiorida) in the marine environment.

Data mining animal of genomes has been used before to identify endoparasites, and may be a particularly useful tool to surpass some difficulties faced by studies in the marine environment. We detected a species of Sarcocystis Lankester, 1882, contamination in the sperm whale (Physeter catodon Linnaeus) reference genome available in the GenBank database. We identified and extracted multiple gene fragments and placed the sequences in a phylogenetic framework.