Ecological divergence and hybridization of Neotropical <i>Leishmania</i> parasites
Author(s)
Nicholas J. Savill
Hideo Imamura
Mandy Sanders
Ilse Maes
Sinclair Cooper
David Mateus
Marlene Jara
Vanessa Adaui
Jorge Arévalo
Alejandro Llanos‐Cuentas
Lineth García
Elisa Cupolillo
Michael A. Miles
Matthew Berriman
Achim Schnaufer
James A. Cotton
Jean‐Claude Dujardin
Date Issued
21 de septiembre de 2020
Type
Article
Volume
117
Issue
40
Start Page
25159
End Page
25168
Abstract
Significance Parasites are interesting models for studying speciation processes because they have a high potential for specialization, thanks to the intimate ecological association with their hosts and vectors. Yet little is known about the circumstances under which new parasite lineages emerge. Here we studied the genome diversity of parasites of the Leishmania braziliensis species complex that inhabit both Amazonian and Andean biotas in Peru. We identify three major parasite lineages that occupy particular ecological niches and show that these emerged during forestation changes over the past 150,000 y. We furthermore discovered that meiotic recombination between Amazonian and Andean lineages resulted in full-genome hybrids presenting mixed mitochondrial genomes, providing insights into the genetic consequences of hybridization in parasitic protozoa.
Subjects