Intercontinental distributions, phylogenetic position and life cycles of species of Apharyngostrigea (Digenea, Diplostomoidea) illuminated with morphological, molecular and genomic data

LOCKE SEAN; DRAGO FABIANA; LÓPEZ-HERNÁNDEZ DANIMAR; CHIBWANAD FRED D. ; NUÑEZ VERÓNICA; VAN DAMA ALEX; ACHINELLY , MARÍA F.; JOHNSON PIETER; COSTA ALVES DE ASSIS JORDANA; LANE DE MELO, ALAN ; ALVES PINTO HUDSON

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR PARASITOLOGY

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2021

0020-7519

Species of digeneans believed to be cosmopolitan are usually found to consist of complexes of species with narrower distributions when subjected to molecular study. We present molecular and morphological evidence of transcontinental distributions in two species of Apharyngostrigea Ciurea, 1924, based on samples from Africa and the Americas. Sequences of cytochrome c oxidase I (CO1) and, in some samples, internal transcribed spacer (ITS), revealed the first African record of Apharyngostrigea pipientis (Faust, 1918) in Tanzania, as well as in Argentina, Brazil, USA and Canada. Sequences from A. pipientis also match previously published sequences identified as Apharyngostrigea cornu (Zeder, 1800) originating in Mexico. The hosts of A. pipientis surveyed include Afrotropic, Neotropic and Nearctic ardeids, as well as Nearctic second and Neotropic first intermediate hosts, including the host and region where A. pipientis was described. In addition, metacercariae of A. pipientis were obtained from experimentally infected Poecilia reticulata, the first record of this parasite in a non-amphibian second intermediate host. Variation of CO1 haplotypes in A. pipientis is consistent with a long established, wide-ranging species with moderate genetic structure among Nearctic, Neotropic and Afrotropic regions. Sequences of CO1 and ITS from adult Apharyngostrigea simplex (Johnston, 1904) from Egretta thula in Argentina matched published data from cercariae from B. straminea from Brazil and metacercariae from Cnesterodon decemmaculatus in Argentina, consistent with previous morphological and life-cycle studies reporting this parasite?originally described in Australia?in South America. Analyses of the mitochondrial genome and rDNA operon from A. pipientis support prior phylogenies based on shorter markers showing the Strigeidae Railliet, 1919 to be polyphyletic.Keywords: Helminth, Trematoda, biogeography, heron, macroparasite, northern leopard frog, Diplostomoidea.