Within-Lineage Divergence of Avian Haemosporidians: A Case Study to Reveal the Origin of a Widespread Haemoproteus Parasite.

Within-Lineage Divergence of Avian Haemosporidians: A Case Study to Reveal the Origin of a Widespread Haemoproteus Parasite. J Parasitol. 2019 Jun;105(3):414-422 Authors: Huang X, Rapševičius P, Chapa-Vargas L, Hellgren O, Bensch S Abstract Avian haemosporidian parasites are particularly diverse and widespread. To date, more than 3,000 distinct cytochrome b lineages have been recorded, of which some present extremely wide geographical distributions, even including multiple continents. Whether these isolates represent one or several cryptic species remains unknown. Here we carried out a case study of SISKIN1, a common haemosporidian parasite lineage belonging to the morphologically described species Haemoproteus tartakovskyi. To shed light on its evolutionary origin, we investigated the divergence between SISKIN1 isolates obtained from siskins and redpolls in Europe (Russia and Sweden) and house finches in North America (Mexico). First, we used sequence capture of a small data set (2 Russian isolates and 1 Mexican isolate) to investigate the genetic structure based on the full-length mitochondrial genome and ∼1,000 genes. The mitochondrial genomes of Russian isolates were identical with each other but differed from the Mexican one at 6 positions. The nuclear divergence between Russian and Mexican isolates was on average 2.8%, close to what has been observed between 2 species of malaria parasites that respectively infect humans (Pl...
Source: The Journal of Parasitology - Category: Parasitology Authors: Tags: J Parasitol Source Type: research