Lanatospora, Voronin, 1989

Vávra, Jiří, Hyliš, Miroslav, Fiala, Ivan, Refardt, Dominik & Larsson, J. I. Ronny, 2016, Microsporidia in a Woodland Pool I. Lanatospora costata sp. n. (Opisthosporidia, Microsporidia), Parasite of Megacyclops viridis (Crustacea, Copepoda): Fine Structure and Molecular Phylogeny, Acta Protozoologica 55 (4), pp. 269-280 : 276-278

The Lanatospora phylogeny

Lanatospora costata n. sp. is presently the first rep- resentative of the genus Lanatospora with a known molecular phylogeny. It belongs to microsporidia assembled into clade I (“class Aquasporidia ”) of the molecular and ecological distribution pattern of microsporidia of Vossbrinck and Debrunner-Vossbrinck 2005, and specifically to the part comprising organisms of the “aquatic outgroup” of Vossbrinck et al. 2004, represented in Fig. 18 by well supported clades B–F. Three microsporidia infecting copepods occur in the “aquatic outgroup”, however only one, Trichotuzetia guttata from oocytes and other tissues of Cyclops vicinus , is member of a sister clade to Lanatospora (clade E, Fig. 18). The other two species ( Marssoniella elegans , parasite of ovarial tissue of Cyclops vicinus (clade D, Fig. 18) and Alfvenia sibirica (clade C, Fig. 18), parasite of the hypoderm and fat body of Cyclops sp. ) are widely separated from Lanatospora and have no mutual phylogenetic relationships ( Fig. 18). Such phylogeny dis- crepance is interesting, as Alfvenia sibirica was report- ed to have a complex, multilayer exospore ( Sokolova et al. 2016), very slightly reminiscent of the exospore of Lanatospora .

In general, relatively few microsporidia from copepods have been sequenced. Most of the sequenced microsporidia species infecting copepods belong to the genera Amblyospora , Hyalinocysta , Parathelohania , Duboscqia and Trichoctosporea , which are dimorphic or polymorphic species infecting mosquitos and have copepods as intermediate hosts ( Bjørnson and Oi 2014, Simakova et al. 2011). These microsporidia form a defined “Am- blyospora-Parathelohania-Hyalinocysta” clade, sister to the “aquatic outgroup” superclade ( Fig. 18).

Other microsporidia from copepods are spread over the complete microsporidia phylogeny and are well outside of the aquatic outgroup (part of clade I in Vossbrinck, Debrunner-Vossbrinck 2005): Paranucleospora (syn. Desmozoon ) (Clade IV), and Facilispora (Clade III) are fish parasites with a copepod morph ( Jones et al. 2012), Mrazekia macrocyclopis Issi et al., 2010 belongs to microsporidia nested within the clade IV.