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Fig. 3 | BMC Evolutionary Biology

Fig. 3

From: Delimitation of five astome ciliate species isolated from the digestive tube of three ecologically different groups of lumbricid earthworms, using the internal transcribed spacer region and the hypervariable D1/D2 region of the 28S rRNA gene

Fig. 3

Phylogenetic tree based on the nuclear 18S, 5.8S, and 28S rRNA genes, showing the phylogenetic positions of astome ciliates isolated from lumbricid earthworms. Members of the subclass Scuticociliatia, which is represented here by the orders Philasterida, Pleuronematida, and the polyphyletic Loxocephalida, are the nearest relatives of astome ciliates. The peniculine Paramecium tetraurelia was used to a posteriori root the trees. Posterior probabilities for Bayesian inferences conducted in MrBayes (BI) and Phycas as well as bootstrap values for Maximum Likelihood conducted in PhyML, IQTrees, and RAxML were mapped onto the 50%-majority rule Bayesian consensus tree. The phylogenetic tree suggests that the evolution of endosymbiotic astome ciliates has proceeded through specialization to ecological groups of their host earthworms. Sequences in bold face were obtained during this study. For specimen codes and further details, see Table 1. The scale bar denotes three substitutions per one hundred nucleotide positions

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