IUBio

New lit.: Tubifex phylogeny

Geoff Read g.read at niwa.cri.nz
Wed May 9 18:23:52 EST 2001


Beauchamp, Katherine A. , R. Deedee   Kathman, Terry S.   McDowell, & 
Ronald P. Hedrick. 2001. Molecular Phylogeny of Tubificid Oligochaetes 
with Special Emphasis on Tubifex tubifex (Tubificidae). -  Molecular 
Phylogenetics and Evolution 19(2):216-224.  

Abstract. "Tubifex tubifex is a cosmopolitan freshwater oligochaete whose 
presence has been studied as a health indicator of the aquatic environment 
and as a host for several myxozoan parasites of fish. Unfortunately, current 
morphological criteria used to distinguish Tubifex spp. (Tubificidae) are 
inadequate. We therefore developed mitochondrial 16S ribosomal DNA 
markers to examine phylogenetic relationships among aquatic oligochaetes 
and to distinguish species of Tubifex that might serve as hosts for a 
particular myxozoan parasite, Myxobolus cerebralis. Our phylogenetic 
analyses of oligochaetes based on a 378-bp segment yielded one most 
parsimonious tree with three major groups that corresponded to the families 
Lumbricidae, Sparganophilidae, and Tubificidae. T. tubifex and T. ignotus 
formed a monophyletic assemblage, and a sister relationship between the 
genera Tubifex and Limnodrilus was strongly supported. A second analysis 
of the relationship within the genus Tubifex identified six genetically distinct 
lineages of T. tubifex from North America and Europe that were separated 
by genetic distances comparable to those found for "well-defined" species 
of Limnodrilus. Therefore, the existence of several morphologically 
indistinguishable, thus cryptic, species of Tubifex in North America and 
Europe is suggested."  

--
  Geoff Read <g.read at niwa.cri.nz>


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