Morphological and molecular evidence for the recognition of Allocreadium bursensis n. sp. (Trematoda: Allocreadiidae) from Angora loach Oxynoemacheilus angorae from Turkey.

This is the first study reporting parasites from the freshwater cyprinid Oxynoemacheilus angorae (Steindachner 1897) caught in Nilüfer Stream, Bursa, in the Northwest Anatolian Region of Turkey. Allocreadium bursensis n. sp. was described from the intesine of O.angorae based on morphological and genetic characteristics. Allocreadium bursensis n. sp. was differentiated from other Allocreadium spp. in having a combination of external (ventral and oral suckers ratio; body length and width and its ratio to forebody) and internal (cirrus pouch position; uterus extension in hindbody; egg size; disposition of anterior border of vitellarium; esophagus length) features. Phylogenetic hypotheses based on maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, Bayesian inferrence, and neighbor joining analyses of sequence data strongly supported the hypothesis that A. bursensis is nested within the clade of Allocreadium species hosted by cypriniform fish, and it is more closely related to the Far Eastern species A. pseudoisoporum (Primorsky region, Russia) than to the African A. apokryfi. According to genetic p-distances, the taxonomic status of trematodes collected in Turkey was established as independent relative to nine of the valid Allocreadium spp.: 1.8-5.8% in 28S gene and 18.8-22.6% in cox1 gene. The present study increases the number of Allocreadium species and their definitive hosts recorded in Turkey and raises the number of Palearctic representatives of Allocreadium spp. to 26.

About the Origin of the Family Allocreadiidae (Trematoda: Plagiorchiida).

The phylogenetic relationships established in the family Allocreadiidae by genetic methods suggest that the center of origin, distribution, and divergence of the studied family is, apparently, eastern regions of Laurasia (the territory of the modern Southeast Asia), from where these trematodes penetrated through the Amur paleomicrocontinent and Beringia to North America and further through Central America to South, as well as through Transbaikalia and Yakutia to the western part of Eurasia.

Diversity of the genus Bunodera Railliet, 1896 (Trematoda: Allocreadiidae) in the northern part of Eastern Europe and North-eastern Asia, estimated from 28S rDNA sequences, with a description of Bunodera vytautasi sp. nov.

Phylogenetic relationship reconstruction and taxonomical analysis of trematodes of the genus Bunodera was carried out using 28S rDNA partial sequences along with a description and molecular characterisation of a new species, B. vytautasi sp. nov. A new species is reported from the intestine of Pungitius pungitius (Linnaeus, 1758), collected from Magadan Region, Russia. The diagnostic characters of B. vytautasi sp. nov. are the extension of vitelline fields from the oral sucker or posterior edge of the pharynx to the posterior extremity of the body, the confluence of vitelline fields within the forebody, the extension of the cirrus-sac to the posterior third of ventral sucker or further backwards with an outlet beyond the posterior edge of the sucker, and the presence of a unipartite internal seminal vesicle. Both Bayesian and Maximum Likelihood trees shared the same tree topology, in which the genus Bunodera was shown to be monophyletic. Representatives of the genus Bunodera were distributed into three well-supported clades: percid-infecting species (Eurasian species B. luciopercae and B. acerinae and North American B. luciopercae s.l.), gasterosteid-infecting species (amphi-Pacific B. mediovitellata and North American B. inconstans and B. eucaliae) and percid/gasterosteid-infecting species (Asiatic B. vytautasi sp. nov. and North American B. sacculata). Eurasian B. luciopercae and B. acerinae were more closely related to each other than to North American B. luciopercae s.l.