Minozzo Guilherme Augusto, da Silva Mathias Bruno, Riediger Irina Nastassja, de Oliveira Guimarães Lilian, Dos Anjos Carolina Clares, Monteiro Eliana Ferreira, Dos Santos Andrea Pires, Biondo Alexander Welker, Kirchgatter Karin
Laboratório Central de Saúde Pública do Paraná, São José dos Pinhais 83060-500, PR, Brazil.
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Medicina Tropical, Instituto de Medicina Tropical, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo 05403-000, SP, Brazil.
Microorganisms. 2021 Jun 7;9(6):1240. doi: 10.3390/microorganisms9061240.
Blood parasites of the Haemosporida order, such as the spp. responsible for malaria, have become the focus of many studies in evolutionary biology. However, there is a lack of molecular investigation of haemosporidian parasites of wildlife, such as the genus Species of this neglected genus exclusively have been described in bats, mainly in Europe, Asia, and Africa, but little is known about its presence and genetic diversity on the American continent. Here, we investigated 406 bats from sites inserted in remnant fragments of the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado biomes and urbanized areas from southern Brazil for the presence of species by PCR of the mitochondrial cytochrome b encoding gene. A total of 1.2% of bats was positive for , providing the first molecular information of these parasites in and , common vespertilionid bats widely distributed in different Brazilian biomes, and , an endangered species. A Bayesian analysis was conducted to reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships between recovered from Brazilian bats and those identified elsewhere. Sequences of Brazilian lineages were placed with and in a clade distinct from , mainly restricted to bats in the family Vespertilionidae. However, the sequences were split into two minor clades, according to the genus of hosts, indicating that and a distinct species may be circulating in Brazil. Morphological observations combined with additional molecular studies are needed to conclude and describe these species.
血孢子虫目（Haemosporida）的血液寄生虫，如导致疟疾的疟原虫属（Plasmodium spp.），已成为进化生物学许多研究的焦点。然而，对于野生动物的血孢子虫寄生虫缺乏分子研究，例如被忽视的疟原虫属（Parahaemoproteus）。该属的物种仅在蝙蝠中被描述过，主要分布在欧洲、亚洲和非洲，但对于其在美洲大陆的存在情况和遗传多样性知之甚少。在这里，我们通过对线粒体细胞色素b编码基因进行PCR，调查了来自巴西南部大西洋森林和塞拉多生物群落残余片段以及城市化地区的406只蝙蝠，以检测疟原虫属（Parahaemoproteus）物种的存在情况。共有1.2%的蝙蝠对疟原虫属呈阳性反应，这为这些寄生虫在巴西常见的普通伏翼蝠（Pipistrellus pipistrellus）和棕伏翼（Pipistrellus hesperidus）以及濒危物种白腹伏翼（Pipistrellus leucogaster）中的首次分子信息提供了依据。进行了贝叶斯分析以重建从巴西蝙蝠中分离出的疟原虫属与在其他地方鉴定出的疟原虫属之间的系统发育关系。巴西疟原虫属谱系的序列与其他疟原虫属一起被置于一个与主要局限于伏翼科（Vespertilionidae）蝙蝠的疟原虫属不同的进化枝中。然而，根据宿主属，这些序列被分为两个小进化枝，这表明在巴西可能有不同的疟原虫属物种在传播。需要结合形态学观察和更多的分子研究来确定并描述这些疟原虫属物种。
