Host-specific parasites from the perspective of cichlid phylogeny and biogeography
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Requested lectures |
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| Description | Highly diversified host taxa usually exhibit high parasite diversity. Speciation and diversification of parasites especially those exhibiting high host specificity is closely related to the history and ecology of their hosts. Monogeneans (Platyhelminthes), mainly gill and fin ectoparasites, are often recognized as specific to a single host species, congeneric hosts or monophyletic assemblage of hosts. Different genera of ectoparasitic monogeneans probably of different origin are distributed on cichlids exhibiting disjunctive distribution (at the level of different continents). We have investigated two biogeographical systems: monogeneans of Neotropical cichlid fish, and monogeneans of African cichlid fish (studying riverine cichlid communities, and Lake Tanganyika cichlid communities of different phylogenetic lineages). In general, our studies reveal ancestral host switches between cichlid tribes followed by diversification of cichlid-specific monogeneans within each tribe of Neotropical and African cichlids as well. However, some more recent host switches were reported between cichlid tribes in Lake Tanganyika. We showed similar patterns of monogenean speciation in riverine cichlid monogeneans in both Afrotropical and Neotropical regions (host switch and intrahost duplication). In contrast, the diversification of monogeneans in Lake Tanganyika seems to be slightly different i.e. is driven by failure to diverge in old cichlid lineages and cospeciation in more recently evolved lineages, and by host switch followed by parasite duplication at the level of the different host tribes. Our studies revealed that structural morphology of attachment organ of monogeneans is constrained by phylogeny. Host specificity of monogeneans seem to be ancestral state in monogeneans of African cichlids. |
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