Geography, phylogeny and host switch drive the coevolution of parasitic Gyrodactylus flatworms and their hosts.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Gyrodactylus is a lineage of monogenean flatworm ectoparasites exhibiting many features that make them a suitable model to study the host-parasite coevolutionary dynamics. Previous coevolutionary studies of this lineage mainly relied on low-power datasets (a small number of samples and a single molecular marker) and (now) outdated algorithms.

Methods

To investigate the coevolutionary relationship of gyrodactylids and their fish hosts in high resolution, we used complete mitogenomes (including two newly sequenced Gyrodactylus species), a large number of species in the single-gene dataset, and four different coevolutionary algorithms.

Results

The overall coevolutionary fit between the parasites and hosts was consistently significant. Multiple indicators confi

SUBMITTER: Lei HP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10825989 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature