With Descriptions of 10 New Species from Freshwater Fishes of the Nearctic
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The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Summer 8-2017 Taxonomy and Systematics of Plagioporus (Trematoda), With Descriptions of 10 New Species From Freshwater Fishes Of The Nearctic Thomas John Fayton University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Parasitology Commons Recommended Citation Fayton, Thomas John, "Taxonomy and Systematics of Plagioporus (Trematoda), With Descriptions of 10 New Species From Freshwater Fishes Of The Nearctic" (2017). Dissertations. 1442. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/1442 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TAXONOMY AND SYSTEMATICS OF PLAGIOPORUS (TREMATODA), WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF 10 NEW SPECIES FROM FRESHWATER FISHES OF THE NEARCTIC by Thomas John Fayton A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School, the College of Science and Technology, and the School of Ocean Science and Technology at The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2017 TAXONOMY AND SYSTEMATICS OF PLAGIOPORUS (TREMATODA), WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF 10 NEW SPECIES FROM FRESHWATER FISHES OF THE NEARCTIC by Thomas John Fayton August 2017 Approved by: ________________________________________________ Dr. Richard Heard, Committee Chair Professor, Ocean Science and Technology ________________________________________________ Dr. Robert Joseph Griffitt, Committee Member Assistant Professor, Ocean Science and Technology ________________________________________________ Dr. Michael Zachary Darnell, Committee Member Assistant Professor, Ocean Science and Technology ________________________________________________ Dr. Anindo Choudhury, Committee Member Adjunct Professor, Ocean Science and Technology ________________________________________________ Dr. Karen S. Coats Dean of the Graduate School COPYRIGHT BY Thomas John Fayton 2017 Published by the Graduate School ABSTRACT TAXONOMY AND SYSTEMATICS OF PLAGIOPORUS (TREMATODA), WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF 10 NEW SPECIES FROM FRESHWATER FISHES OF THE NEARCTIC by Thomas John Fayton August 2017 The Opecoelidae Ozaki, 1925 is one of the largest families of digenetic trematodes of fishes. While the family is mostly marine/estuarine, invasion of freshwater hosts has occurred at least two times. The only representative freshwater plagioporine sequenced to date is Plagiocirrus loboides Curran, Overstreet, & Tkach, 2007, which previous phylogenetic analyses resolved as being related to deep water marine opecoelids. The taxonomy of the freshwater plagioporines, particularly Plagioporus, has long been confused; homoplasy is rife within the family and has complicated the delineation of species and genera, and the freshwater species from marine forms. Here, I hypothesize that the freshwater plagioporines, including Plagioporus, form a monophyletic group and that intestinal Plagioporus have radiated across many families of freshwater/anadromous fish and within several, particularly for the cyprinids, percids and catostomids. I describe 10 new species and 2 new forms of Plagioporus from North America, and redescribe 3 congeners. I obtained sequences of the ITS1+2 and 28S rDNA gene regions of these new species and forms, 5 previously described congeners from the Nearctic and also from 5 species of Neoplagioporus and Urorchis from Japan. Bayesian inference analysis of 28S and 28S concatenated with ITS2 revealed that the freshwater plagioporines form a monophyletic group, with species from the Nearctic resolved as ii sister to those from the Palearctic with high support. Plagiocirrus loboides was nested within the clade composed of members of Plagioporus and was therefore transferred to Plagioporus. Plagioporus was amended to accommodate a posteriorly extending uterus and restricted vitelline field, two characters that were also shown to be problematic in distinguishing Urorchis from Neoplagioporus. Plagioporus was further amended to accommodate 2 species from Arkansas with long excretory vesicles. Nearctic Plagioporus now comprise a monophyletic group with species from cyprinid, catostomid, percid, salmonid, gasterosteid, fundulid, ictalurid and cottid definitive hosts. In addition, morphological and molecular data suggest that monophyletic radiations of intestinal Plagioporus have occurred within the percids, cyprinids and catostomids. With 23 species, Plagioporus is now the most diverse digenean genus of fish trematodes in the Nearctic and one of the most successful in terms of its radiation across fish host families. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work would not have been possible without the support of my parents, who provided financial support and also allowed me to work up my dissertation for 21 months in a makeshift lab in their home in New Hampshire. I am indebted to Dr. Anindo Choudhury (St. Norbert College) for providing lab space, microscopy equipment and molecular supplies while working up species description at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin and for providing specimens of P. boleosomi, P. kolipinskii and P. shawi. My residence at St. Norbert College would not have been possible without Vassar College Fellowships that provided funds for the collection of freshwater plagioporines and also living expenses while working up species descriptions in Wisconsin, including an Adolph Sutro Fellowship in 2013/2014, a Nancy Skinner Clark Fellowship in 2014/2015 and an additional Nancy Skinner Clark Fellowship in 2015/2016. I appreciate the support of the US Fish and Wildlife Service in allowing me to finish writing my dissertation while also working as a fish biologist. From the University of Southern Mississippi, I thank Dr. Richard Heard and Dr. Robin Overstreet for provision of microscopy equipment, access to the molecular lab and supplies and for their expertise on digenean parasites, Dr. Michael Andres and Dr. Stephen Curran for their expert opinions on parasites and guidance with molecular work, Jean Jovonovich Alvillar and Janet Wright for their assistance with DNA sequencing reactions, Juanma Carillo for help contacting professors during my time away from Mississippi, and Guillermo Sanchez for help collecting fish in California. I further thank Dr. Peter B. Moyle and his lab members for help collecting fish in California. I am grateful to Dr. Charles Criscione (Texas A&M) for providing specimens of P. shawi. I’m also thankful to Sean Locke (University of iv Puerto Rico-Mayagüez), David Marcogliese (Environment Canada) and associated personnel from Environment Canada who aided in the collection of fish hosts of P. sinitsini and P. serotinus and provided lab space for dissections in Montreal, Canada. Moreover, I am appreciative of William F. Font (University of Southern Louisiana) for informing me of the Plagioporus sp. from C. carolinae in Arkansas. Sampling of Plagioporus from the Great Smokey Mountains National Park would not have been possible without the assistance of the National Park Service (NPS), especially Matt Kulp, Rebecca Nichols and Paul Super as well as the provision of a scientific research and collecting permit (#GRSM-2014-SCI-1153). I thank Dr. Sherman S. Hendrix and Dr. Peter Fong (Gettysburg College) for their assistance in collecting fish and snails from Marsh Creek, Pennsylvania, and further am thankful to Dr. Hendrix for informing me of his previous work on fish trematodes in the Great Smokey Mountains. From Virginia Tech, I thank both Dr. Lisa Belden and Sally Zemmer for providing lab space and recommending sampling sites where larval opecoelids had previously been collected in Virginia. I appreciate the help of Dr. James Diana (University of Michigan) for advice on sampling localities and provision of lab space during my attempt to collect P. lepomis in Michigan. I also thank Dr. Urabe Misako (University of Shiga Prefecture) and Dr. Takeshi Shimazu for providing their insights on and specimens of opecoelids from Japan. This work would not have been possible without the issuing of scientific permits from various entities, including the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. This project would not have been possible without the sampling assistance of Dr. Chris T. McAllister (Eastern Oklahoma State College) and Matthew B. Connior (Northwest Arkansas Community College) and the fish v identifications of Dr. Henry W. Robison (Southern Arkansas University). Lastly, I deeply appreciate the financial support of the various grants that funded my asssitantships while living in Mississippi, including Dr. Mark Peterson’s NOAA-NRDA grant on Atlantic Sturgeon, a NSF museum improvement grant awarded to Dr. Stephen Curran and Dr. Sara Lecroy, a BOEM grant awarded to the fisheries department and Dr. Richard Heard’s NRDA grant on decapods. I thank my advisors for taking the time to read and edit this dissertation and being understanding of my unique situation in being a remote student off campus for the past 2 years. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv LIST OF TABLES ...........................................................................................................