title: Evolutionary relationships of Spirurina (Nematoda: Chromadorea: Rhabditida) with special emphasis on dracunculoid nematodes inferred from SSU rRNA gene sequences.
abstract: The analysis of 26 new small subunit rRNA sequences obtained from helminths that primarily parasitize fishes sampled from five continents provided well-supported trees, allowing us to study the phylogenetic relationships among spirurid nematodes. The analyses have shown that Dracunculoidea is a paraphyletic taxon and Anguillicolidae and Gnathostomatidae constitute the basal branch of the suborder Spirurina. The genera Philometra and Philometroides appear to be paraphyletic, while on the higher taxonomic level, good correlation between the morphology-based system and molecular data was observed. Neither co-evolution of the studied helminths with their hosts, nor phylogeographic pattern, are apparent in our dataset.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Parasitology, Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Ceské Budejovice, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Martina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wijová
authors.forename: Frantisek
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Moravec
authors.forename: Ales
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Horák
authors.forename: Julius
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lukes
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D018509:DNA, Helminth / Q000235:genetics; D030561:Databases, Nucleic Acid; D017176:Dracunculoidea / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005399:Fishes / Q000469:parasitology; D017238:Genes, Helminth; D020459:Genes, rRNA; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000379:methods; D018510:RNA, Helminth / Q000235:genetics; D017177:Spirurina / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D018509:DNA, Helminth; D018510:RNA, Helminth