De novo developed microsatellite markers for monogeneans and their application to study population genetics of generalist Dactylogyrus species
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | Over the last few decades, genetic markers have been intensively developed to study the population genetics in a wide range of organisms; however, they are weakly applied in parasites' population studies. Microsatellite markers (together with mitochondrial DNA) are considered as a golden standard for population genetic studies. These highly polymorphic short tandem repeats are due to their unique characteristics (e.g., high allelic variance, codominance, and Mendelian inheritance) usually applied to infer gene flow rate, hybridization, or mating patterns on the intraand interpopulation levels. Even though one set of such microsatellite markers was already developed for the monogeneans (more specifically for the Gyrodactylus), they were not previously applied to assess the population structure and diversity of these ectoparasitic helminths. In the present study, we de novo developed set of 24 microsatellite markers and used them to investigate the genetic diversity of the generalist monogenean species Dactylogyrus vistulae parasitizing cyprinoid fish. The analyzed parasite specimens were collected from 13 cyprinoid species from 11 sites in the Apennine and Balkan peninsulas. A total of 159 specimens were genotyped at each of the loci and the number of alleles per locus ranged from 2 to 16, with a mean number of 6.958 alleles per locus. Exceptionally high genetic diversity was observed among D. vistulae individuals in the southern Balkans, suggesting that this region might represent the centre of diversification of Dactylogyrus species in Europe, from where Dactylogyrus parasites expanded to the north of Europe. The initial clustering analysis divided all investigated specimens into three major clusters; however, the results of the subsequent analyses revealed the existence of various subpopulations, suggesting that the population structure of D. vistulae is associated with the diversification of their cyprinoid hosts. In addition, partition of the parasite population was observed in regions of the sympatric occurrence of two host species, indicating that these hosts may represent a barrier to gene flow, even for generalist parasite species. |
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