Origin and evolution of African Polystoma (Monogenea: Polystomatidae) assessed by molecular methods

Endoparasitic mites of the genus Endotrombicula Ewing, 1931 (Acari: Prostigmata: Parasitengona: Trombiculidae) from African and Madagascan anurans, with description of a new species

“…In many cases, occurrence and phylogenies of parasites mirror those of their hosts and can therefore provide crucial evidence on their hosts' relationships; e.g., Bentz et al (2001) for polystome plathelminths in amphibians. A further group of parasites regularly found in amphibians are mites, but systematic studies on these are relatively rare and mostly inaccurate.…”

“…However, recent evidence suggests that amphibians are capable to disperse over marine barriers (Vences et al 2003, 2004, Measey et al 2006. Although current assembling of comprehensive molecular data sets leads to fast progress in the understanding of phylogenetic and biogeographic relationships among amphibians, independent data are needed to validate these often surprising results.In many cases, occurrence and phylogenies of parasites mirror those of their hosts and can therefore provide crucial evidence on their hosts' relationships; e.g., Bentz et al (2001) for polystome plathelminths in amphibians. A further group of parasites regularly found in amphibians are mites, but systematic studies on these are relatively rare and mostly inaccurate.…”

Constraining the Deep Origin of Parasitic Flatworms and Host-Interactions with Fossil Evidence

“…The most conservative way to implement them would be to use the oldest reliable estimate for the origin of this group as a maximum and the oldest from well-attributable fossil to this lineage as a minimum. Polystomatid flatworms are one of the most host-specific groups of parasitic flatworms and their direct life cycle that involves a short free-living aquatic larval stage (which means they are probably only passively disseminated by their hosts), have made them an ideal model to test the use of constraints from biogeography and the host fossil record (Bentz et al, 2001(Bentz et al, , 2006Verneau et al, 2002Verneau et al, , 2009aBadets et al, 2011). Verneau et al (2002) used 425 Ma to calibrate the split between Actinopterygii and Sarcopterygii (Figure 6), although this event must have happened at the latest by about 419 Ma ).…”

“…There is at least some evidence that extinction might also have played a role in parasitic flatworms and other helminths over longer timescales as several parasiteehost associations documented in the (sub)fossil record are now evidently extinct (Upeniece, 2001(Upeniece, , 2011Poinar and Boucot, 2006;Wood et al, 2013). Furthermore, molecular studies with greater taxonomic coverage have particularly focused on biomedically or economically important taxa such as Schistosomatidae (Lockyer et al, 2003b;Orélis-Ribeiro et al, 2014) or particular lineages with a high host specificity such as Polystomatidae (Bentz et al, 2001(Bentz et al, , 2006Badets et al, 2011Badets et al, , 2013Héritier et al, 2015). To better Figure 6 Ultrametric tree of neobatrachian polystomes inferred from MULTIDIVTIME (Modified after Verneau et al (2009b).).…”

A Review of Molecular Approaches for Investigating Patterns of Coevolution in Marine Host–Parasite Relationships

“…Therefore, a decrease in specificity might be mirrored by a range increase of the host. In addition, specialization can also predominantly be under the influence of ecological factors (Bentz et al, 2001;Desdevises et al, 2002a,b). For example, the association between digenean families and their vertebrate taxa is often defined by ecophysiological similarity rather than phylogenetic relationships (Cribb et al, 2001), which may mask insights into coevolutionary processes.…”