Table 3.

Performance of Marteilia-specific 18S–5.8S rRNA gene primers designed in this study, on DNA samples from the Tamar estuary, 2013–2017

Year	0.45 µm-filtered water	20 µm-filtered water	Sediment
2013	4/25	1/7	1/2
2015	4/9	−	2/9
2016	3/9	−	−
2017	0/14	−	−

Bivalve DNA samples not reported: the new primers performed equivalently to Pr4-Pr5 in the subset of samples tested. x/y indicates the number of positive samples out of total tested. All positives were confirmed as M. pararefringens by sequencing. No non-target sequences were amplified. Dashes = no samples tested.