“…While Paramoebae perniciosa has not been isolated from environmental water or soil samples (Sawyer, 1975(Sawyer, , 1977(Sawyer, , 1980, researchers determined experimentally that it is probably capable of surviving outside of its blue crab host in brackish to high salinity waters (Sawyer, 1980). Other pathogenic amoebas have been isolated from water and sediment samples (Crosbie et al, 2005;Sawyer, 1977), so, while these species are not known to infect crustaceans, the potential exists that infective amoebas exist in the natural environment and await discovery (Sawyer, 1990).…”