Ancient divergence of Paragonimus westermani in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Adult flukes of Paragonimus species were obtained from lungs of experimental animals infected with metacercariae found in field-collected freshwater crabs in Sri Lanka. Morphological studies of adult worms under a scanning electron microscope as well as a ordinary microscope were performed in the present study. All of morphological features observed clearly indicated that this species is P. westermani. On the other hand, the shapes of metacercariae were found to be mainly oval, but semioval and spherical ones also coexisted. In spite of the variety of their morphology of the metacercariae, there is no correlation between their shapes of metacercariae and the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequences. Molecular phylogenetic analyses using two DNA regions (partial mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 and second internal transcribed spacer of the nuclear ribosomal gene repeat) placed the adult flukes of P. westermani from Sri Lanka basal in a tree including all specimens of P. westermani from various areas in Asia and P. siamensis from Thailand. The present study showed that P. westermani from Sri Lanka is an ancestral form.