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Acta Parasitologica, Vol.47, No. 1, 2002, 20-28
Niewiadomska Katarzyna*, Laskowski Zdzislaw - Systematic relationships among six species of Diplostomum Nordmann, 1832 (Digenea) based on morphological and molecular data. ++

W. Stefanski Institute of Parasitology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Twarda 51/55, 00-818 Warszawa, Poland
* Corresponding author: niewiadk@twarda.pan.pl
++ The nucleotide sequence data reported in this paper are availablein GenBank database under the accession numbers: Diplostomum paracaudum (AF419272), Diplostomum pseudospathaceum (AF419273); Diplostomum baeri (AF419274); Diplostomum spathaceum, Warsaw (AF419275); Diplostomum spathaceum, Kosewo (AF419276); Diplostomum parviventosum, Warsaw (AF419277); Diplostomum parviventosum, Kosewo (AF419278); Diplostomum mergi (AF419279).
ABSTRACT

The identification of many Diplostomum species is difficult due to their high morphological similarity. For six species: D. spathaceum, D. parviventosum, D. mergi, D. paracaudum, D. pseudospathaceum and D. baeri phylogenetic analyses based on morphological data and sequences of ITS1 region of the rDNA were conducted. It was demonstrated that the phylogenetic trees obtained for morphological data at cercarial, metacercarial and adult stages, as well as all characters together differ in branch topology from one another. Molecular data support the composition of species in two clusters (D. spathaceum, D. parviventosum, D. mergi and D. paracaudum, D. pseudospathaceum) with D. baeri outside these clusters. The phylogenetic tree derived from the molecular data is most similar to that based on cercarial characters. No differences were observed among sequences of D. spathaceum and D. parviventosum. The comparative analysis of the molecular and morphology-based phylogenies is given.


KEY WORDS: Diplostomum spp., Digenea, phylogeny, morphology, ITS1, rDNA
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