Myrsidea

Brewer, Paige J. & Sweet, Andrew D., 2023, Prevalence and diversity of parasitic bird lice (Insecta: Psocodea) in northeast Arkansas, International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife 22, pp. 205-215 : 209-212

3.4. Phylogeny and genetic distances of Myrsidea and Brueelia lice

We attempted to amplify 21 Myrsidea and 16 Brueelia samples. Of these, we successfully sequenced cox 1 from 15 Myrsidea and 12 Brueelia and EF1-1 α from 5 Myrsidea and 11 Brueelia . The Myrsidea cox 1 gene alignment trimmed to 410 base pairs (bp) and EF1-1 α gene alignment to 413 bp. The Brueelia cox 1 gene alignment trimmed to 420 bp and EF-1 α gene to 367 bp. The concatenated alignment of both genes was 788 bp with 31 taxa for Brueelia and 842 bp with 20 taxa for Myrsidea , including

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outgroups and additional data from GenBank ( Table S2).

The most appropriate substitution model for the cox 1 alignment for both Myrsidea and Brueelia was K3Pu + F + I + G4. The model most appropriate for the EF-1 α alignment for both Myrsidea and Brueelia was TNe-R2. The optimal partitioning scheme for the concatenated phylogenies treated the genes as separate partitions for both Myrsidea and Brueelia .

The concatenated Myrsidea phylogeny had 8 well-supported

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branches (over 70 bootstrap value) ( Fig. 4a ). The average cox 1 genetic distance between all Myrsidea lice, excluding the outgroup, was 0.1506 (Table S5). The independent cox 1 gene trees had a few notable different phylogenetic relationships compared to the concatenated tree. For example, lice from S. aurocapilla in the concatenated phylogeny sorted into three clades whereas the cox 1 phylogeny sorted S. aurocapilla lice into two clades ( Fig. 4a , Fig. S1 ). One S. aurocapilla clade from the cox 1 tree included only lice from other S. aurocapilla whereas the other clade included lice from S. ruticilla and Northern Cardinal ( Cardinalis cardinalis ). These lice from S. aurocapilla had an average cox 1 genetic distance of 0.0053 from each other (Table S5). Additionally, the concatenated and cox 1 phylogenies recovered most Myrsidea lice from Turdidae in a well-supported group (84 bootstrap) ( Fig. 4a , Fig. S1 ), with an average cox 1 genetic distance of 0.0082 within the clade (Table S5).

The concatenated Brueelia phylogeny had 9 well-supported branches with bootstrap values over 70. There were no notable differences between the concatenated and cox 1 phylogenies for Brueelia lice . The average cox 1 genetic distance for Brueelia lice , excluding the outgroup, was 0.1510 (Table S6). In the concatenated phylogeny, several Brueelia lice from Turdidae grouped together in a clade ( Fig. 4b ; Fig. S6). The average cox 1 genetic distance among these lice was 0.1464 (Table S6). One group (61 bootstrap) of lice included lice from S. aurocapilla , M. lincolnii , and Gray Catbird ( Dumetella carolinensis ) with an average cox 1 distance of 0.0375 (Table S6; Fig. 4b ). Another group included lice from Z. albicollis , Dark-eyed Junco ( Junco hyemalis ), and S. aurocapilla

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(74 bootstrap) (Table S6; Fig. 4b ). The average cox 1 distance among this clade, excluding the J. hyemalis louse without a cox 1 sequence, was 0.0 (Table S6). Similarly, Brueelia lice from Brown-headed Cowbird ( Molothrus ater ) came out in an isolated, well-supported group (100 bootstrap) with an average cox 1 distance of 0.0 (Table S6; Fig. 4b ). Molothrus ater lice from previous studies came out in a separate clade from our M. ater lice, with an average cox 1 distance of 0.1364 (Table S6).

Figures

Fig. 4. Phylogeny of lice in the genera Myrsidea (a) and Brueelia (b) based on a concatenated alignment of cox1 and EF1-α sequences. Bootstrap values are located above the associated branches. Only values>50% are shown. Novel samples are labeled with the host species name followed by a 7-digit extraction code. All other ingroup samples were obtained from NCBI GenBank and are labeled with host species names. Outgroups are labeled with genus of louse followed by host species.

Fig. 1. The diversity of louse genera collected from 28 families of birds. Colors associated with each louse genus are indicated in the right-side legend. The numerical values indicate percentages. The sample size is indicated by the parenthesize to the right of genus names. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)