Application of DNA barcoding and morphometric analysis in differentiating cystacanths of Polymorphus species (Acanthocep
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GENETICS, EVOLUTION, AND PHYLOGENY - ORIGINAL PAPER
Application of DNA barcoding and morphometric analysis in differentiating cystacanths of Polymorphus species (Acanthocephala: Polymorphidae) from central Alberta, Canada Zhuoyan Song 1,2
&
Heather Proctor 1
Received: 17 April 2020 / Accepted: 30 August 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Acanthocephalans are multi-host endoparasites, many of which use freshwater amphipods as intermediate hosts for their larval stages (e.g., cystacanths) while adults live in the intestines of vertebrates, including waterfowl. In central Alberta, Canada, several co-occurring species of the acanthocephalan genus Polymorphus use the amphipod Gammarus lacustris Sars, 1863 as an intermediate host. We applied DNA barcoding and morphometric analysis to differentiate cystacanth larvae from G. lacustris sampled from 17 Albertan water bodies. We slide-mounted specimens and measured morphological traits relating to proboscis hooks. We sequenced the standard DNA barcoding region of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene (COI). Morphometric analysis suggested that the acanthocephalans we collected belonged to four morphologically different groups that keyed to Polymorphus contortus (Bremser, 1821) Travassos, 1926; P. marilis Van Cleave, 1939; P. paradoxus Connel et Corner, 1957; and P. strumosoides (Lundström, 1942) Amin, 2013. Our Bayesian tree based on COI sequences generally corroborated the morphological results and supported that the specimens assigned to P. cf. contortus and P. cf. strumosoides belong to two distinct species. In contrast, the Bayesian tree showed that specimens of P. cf. marilis were nested as a cluster within the P. cf. paradoxus clade. Similarly, small pairwise genetic distance (< 2%) between specimens identified as P. cf. contortus and P. cf. strumosoides suggests that they are conspecific. Future studies should use morphology and sequence data from adult acanthocephalans to assess the taxonomic identity of the cystacanth-based Polymorphus taxa. Our study is the first to provide genetic information for the four Polymorphus taxa and emphasizes the importance of applying multiple approaches to differentiate parasite species. Keywords Acanthocephala . Multi-host life cycle . Mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene . Amphipods
Introduction Assessing parasite species richness is a challenging task for parasitologists (Poulin and Morand 2005). This is especially Section Editor: Georg von Samson-Himmelstjerna Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-020-06870-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Zhuoyan Song [email protected] 1
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E9, Canada
2
Present address: Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research (GLIER), University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue, Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4, Canada
true for species in which larval an
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