Rozella

Rozella is a genus of fungi whose members live as obligate endoparasites inside other microbes, chiefly water molds and chytrid-like fungi in the groups Oomycota, Chytridiomycota and Blastocladiomycota. The French mycologist Marie Maxime Cornu described the genus in 1872 and named it for Ernest Roze. It now holds 27 species, of which Rozella allomycis is the best studied. Species grow inside the host cell, first as an unwalled thallus and then as either a zoosporangium built from the host wall or a thick-walled resting spore, and some are monosporangiate while others are polysporangiate. Rozella belongs to the clade called Cryptomycota, Rozellomycota or Rozellida, regarded as one of the earliest diverging fungal lineages, and many of its relatives are known only from DNA detected in soil, freshwater and marine samples.