Hepatocystis, Levaditi & Schoen, 1932

Schaer, Juliane, McMichael, Lee, Gordon, Anita N., Russell, Daniel, Matuschewski, Kai, Perkins, Susan L., Field, Hume & Power, Michelle, 2018, Phylogeny of Hepatocystis parasites of Australian flying foxes reveals distinct parasite clade, International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife 7 (2), pp. 207-212 : 209

3.1. Phylogenetic analysis reveals distinct clade of Hepatocystis

The maximum likelihood and Bayesian analysis of the concatenated dataset of five genes, rooted with the avian haemosporidian genus Leucocytozoon , confirmed Hepatocystis as monophyletic clade with high support and grouped all sequences isolated from the parasites of the three different Australian Pteropus host species within the Hepatocystis clade ( Fig. 1 ). The Bayesian analysis recovered the mammalian Plasmodium (Plasmodium) and Plasmodium (Vinckeia) clade as closest relative of Hepatocystis , as shown before (e.g. Borner et al., 2016; Galen et al., 2018). Strikingly, within the Hepatocystis clade, the Australian and Asian parasite sequences from Pteropus hosts form one distinct clade, which groups as sister clade to the remaining primate and bat Hepatocystis sequences ( Fig. 1 ). Moreover, the “ Pteropus ” parasite clade is separated in two groups, each comprising a mix of parasite sequences of the different Pteropus host species. One group includes the published parasite sequences of the Asian bat hosts Pteropus vampyrus and Pteropus hypomelanus , and the other also contains one parasite sequence of the Asian P. vampyrus host ( Fig. 1 ). These data clearly suspend host-specificity patterns.

Together, the chiropteran/primate Hepatocystis sister clade contains the monophyletic primate Hepatocystis clade with the single parasite sequence of the Asian bat Hipposideros larvatus and two parasite sequences from the Asian flying fox genus Cynopterus on the one hand and a second subgroup that obtains again two parasite sequences from the Asian flying fox genus Cynopterus and the whole clade of African bat Hepatocystis parasites.

Figures

Fig. 1. Concatenated analysis. Bayesian analysis of concatenated alignment of two mitochondrial (cytb, cox1), one apicoplast (clpC), and two nuclear genes (ef2, PAT) rooted with Leucocytozoon species from birds. Posterior probabilities are given. (A) Clade of Hepatocystis presents the sister clade to mammalian Plasmodium (Plasmodium) and Plasmodium (Vinckeia) species. The parasite sequences of the study from Australian Pteropus species, form one distinct clade (together with three sequences from Asian Pteropus species) (highlighted in yellow). The sister clade contains all sequences from primate Hepatocystis (highlighted in blue), the African bat Hepatocystis parasites (highlighted in red) and sequences of Hepatocystis from Asian flying foxes of the genus Cynopterus and Hipposideros. (B) section from (A), uncollapsed Hepatocystis clades. Sequences of the study are highlighted in bold. Australasian Hepatocystis sequences from Pteropus hosts fall in two subclades and no host species specificity is apparent as the sequences from all three-host species group in two main clades.(For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)