Journal
MOLECULAR PHYLOGENETICS AND EVOLUTION
Volume 114, Issue -, Pages 234-248Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.ympev.2017.06.017
Keywords
Phylogeny; Leech; Placobdella; COI variation; Species delimitation
Funding
- NSERC Discovery Grants
- Royal Ontario Museum through Schad Conservation Funds
- Royal Ontario Museum through Olle Engkvist Byggmastare Foundation
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Placobdella is a genus of blood-feeding leeches in the family Glossiphoniidae. Historically, species of Placobdella have posed difficulty for systematists owing to a lack of informative morphological characters and the preponderance of inadequate or incomplete species descriptions. Here, we conduct a phylogenetic analysis of 55 individuals representing 20 of the 24 currently recognized nominal taxa using COI, ND1, 12S rDNA and ITS sequences under parsimony, maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference. We also examine the isolated COI phylogeny for the genus using an expanded dataset encompassing three additional species not included in the concatenated dataset. Finally, we assess genetic variation at the COI locus to validate initial specimen identifications and estimate how COI variation may reflect species boundaries. We conclude that Placobdella is a monophyletic group that places as the sister group to a Glade formed by the genera Haementeria and Helobdella. We discuss the evolutionary implications of several internal relationships that are robustly resolved by all three optimality criteria, paying particular attention to the apparent fluidity of morphological characters exhibited by members of Placobdella. We also find preliminary evidence for the presence of cryptic and undescribed diversity within the genus. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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