title: Phylogeny of haemosporidian blood parasites revealed by a multi-gene approach.
abstract: The apicomplexan order Haemosporida is a clade of unicellular blood parasites that infect a variety of reptilian, avian and mammalian hosts. Among them are the agents of human malaria, parasites of the genus Plasmodium, which pose a major threat to human health. Illuminating the evolutionary history of Haemosporida may help us in understanding their enormous biological diversity, as well as tracing the multiple host switches and associated acquisitions of novel life-history traits. However, the deep-level phylogenetic relationships among major haemosporidian clades have remained enigmatic because the datasets employed in phylogenetic analyses were severely limited in either gene coverage or taxon sampling. Using a PCR-based approach that employs a novel set of primers, we sequenced fragments of 21 nuclear genes from seven haemosporidian parasites of the genera Leucocytozoon, Haemoproteus, Parahaemoproteus, Polychromophilus and Plasmodium. After addition of genomic data from 25 apicomplexan species, the unreduced alignment comprised 20,580 bp from 32 species. Phylogenetic analyses were performed based on nucleotide, codon and amino acid data employing Bayesian inference, maximum likelihood and maximum parsimony. All analyses resulted in highly congruent topologies. We found consistent support for a basal position of Leucocytozoon within Haemosporida. In contrast to all previous studies, we recovered a sister group relationship between the genera Polychromophilus and Plasmodium. Within Plasmodium, the sauropsid and mammal-infecting lineages were recovered as sister clades. Support for these relationships was high in nearly all trees, revealing a novel phylogeny of Haemosporida, which is robust to the choice of the outgroup and the method of tree inference.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Zoology and Zoological Museum, University of Hamburg, Martin-Luther-King-Platz 3, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Janus
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Borner
authors.affiliation: Institute of Zoology and Zoological Museum, University of Hamburg, Martin-Luther-King-Platz 3, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pick
authors.affiliation: Institute of Zoology and Zoological Museum, University of Hamburg, Martin-Luther-King-Platz 3, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Jenny
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Thiede
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Ilorin, PMB 1515, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria.
authors.forename: Olatunji Matthew
authors.initials: OM
authors.lastname: Kolawole
authors.affiliation: Institute of Agricultural Research for Development, Veterinary Research Laboratory, Wakwa Regional Center, PO Box␣65, Ngaoundere, Cameroon.
authors.forename: Manchang Tanyi
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Kingsley
authors.affiliation: Institute of Zoology and Zoological Museum, University of Hamburg, Martin-Luther-King-Platz 3, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Jana
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schulze
authors.affiliation: Institute of Experimental Ecology, University of Ulm, Albert-Einstein Allee 11, D-89069 Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Veronika M
authors.initials: VM
authors.lastname: Cottontail
authors.affiliation: Gaertner & Colleagues Laboratory, Elisabethenstr. 11, D-88212 Ravensburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Nele
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Wellinghausen
authors.affiliation: Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Bernhard-Nocht-Str. 74, D-20359 Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Jonas
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schmidt-Chanasit
authors.affiliation: Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Bernhard-Nocht-Str. 74, D-20359 Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Iris
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bruchhaus
authors.affiliation: Institute of Zoology and Zoological Museum, University of Hamburg, Martin-Luther-King-Platz 3, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany. Electronic address: thorsten.burmester@uni-hamburg.de.
authors.forename: Thorsten
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Burmester
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D044822:Biodiversity; D005075:Biological Evolution; D001717:Birds / Q000469:parasitology; D017931:DNA Primers / Q000235:genetics; D016787:Haemosporida / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008288:Malaria / Q000469:parasitology; D008322:Mammals / Q000469:parasitology; D010271:Parasites / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D010802:Phylogeny; D010961:Plasmodium / Q000235:genetics; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D012104:Reptiles / Q000469:parasitology
chemical_list: D017931:DNA Primers
keywords: Alveolata; Apicomplexa; Haemosporida; Malaria; Parasitology