A Combined Morphometric and Molecular Approach to Identifying Metacercariae ofEuclinostomum heterostomum(Digenea: Clinostomidae)

Abstract

Metacercariae of species of Euclinostomum have been found encysted in kidney, liver, and muscles of several fish species, while adults occur in the mouth, pharynx, larynx, trachea, and upper esophagus of fish-eating birds. The aim of this work was to gather molecular and morphological data from the type species, Euclinostomum heterostomum, as a starting point for needed revisions of the genus. Metacercariae were collected from cichlids in Lake Kinneret, Israel, and all were identified as E. heterostomum based on morphology. This identification was further confirmed by principal components analyses that revealed no partitions in morphometric resemblance, indicating that the material represents a single species, and that the specimens were morphometrically similar to other descriptions of E. heterostomum. In phylogenetic analysis of concatenated partial internal transcribed spacer 1 and 2, 5.8S rDNA, and partial cytochrome c oxidase I barcode sequences, the isolates of Euclinostomum obtained in this study form a single, monophyletic group separate from recently published data from Euclinostomum sp. from Thailand and from Clinostomum species, which are also monophyletic. The morphological and molecular data reported in the present work can provide a useful point of reference for future studies.

Molecular and Histopathological Data on Levisunguis subaequalis Curran, Overstreet, Collins & Benz, 2014 (Pentastomida: Eupentastomida: Porocephalida: Porocephaloidea: Sebekidae: Sebekinae) from Gambusia affinis in Alabama, USA

“…To date, only Barton and Morgan (2016) and Woodyard et al (2019a) provide 18S, 28S, and COI sequence data from the same specimens for 4 of the 141 currently described pentastomid species for the analyses carried out in the present study. While phylogenetic analyses using concatenated ribosomal and mitochondrial sequence data are increasingly being used for phylogenetic inference in other parasitic groups as evidenced by recent works on species ranging from Clinostomidae (Caffara et al, 2016;Woodyard et al, 2017;Briosio-Aguilar et al, 2019) to Emeriidae (Ogedengbe et al, 2018;Woodyard et al, 2019b), the present molecular data from pentastomids are not suitable for such analyses. While there are over 141 described pentastomid species belonging to 26 genera (Christoffersen and de Assis, 2013), molecular data, including the data from the present study, are publicly available for only 14 species from 11 genera.…”

Morphological and Molecular Characteristics of Clinostomid Metacercariae from Korea and Myanmar

“…Especially, they were also found in fish from Thailand and India, the adjacent countries of Myanmar [30][31][32]. The morphometric and molecular characteristics of E. heterostomum metacercariae, which were detected in the cichilid fish from Lake Kinneret in Israel, were described by Caffara et al [28]. The metacercariae (av.…”

“…The metacercariae of E. heterostomum were detected in fish hosts from several geographical regions [28][29][30][31][32]. Especially, they were also found in fish from Thailand and India, the adjacent countries of Myanmar [30][31][32].…”

Multidisciplinary investigation on the catfish parasite Hamatopeduncularia Yamaguti, 1953 (Monogenoidea: Dactylogyridae): description of two new species from India, and phylogenetic considerations

“…Modeo et al 2013a,b;Nitla et al 2018;Fokin et al 2019), parasitic metazoans included (e.g. Blair & Barker 1993;Zhu et al 1998;Caffara et al 2016;Sailaja et al 2016;Mendoza-Franco et al 2018;Tedesco et al 2018). As for monogenoidean parasites, however, there are no published molecular studies on the genus Hamatopeduncularia except for the paper by Mendoza-Franco et al (2018) which provides partial sequences of the 28S rRNA gene from monogeneans of ariid, sparid and haemulid hosts to explore their systematic position within the Monogenea.…”