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. 2025 May 1;124(5):47.
doi: 10.1007/s00436-025-08490-4.

Haemosporidian and trypanosomatid diversity in a high-latitude island ecosystem, including the first record of Zelonia in the Nearctic

Jacqueline Savage  1 , Jaclyn Santos  1 , Paul R Sweet  2 , Spencer C Galen  3
Affiliations

Haemosporidian and trypanosomatid diversity in a high-latitude island ecosystem, including the first record of Zelonia in the Nearctic

Jacqueline Savage et al. Parasitol Res. .

Abstract

Biodiversity surveys remain a critical tool for characterizing the global species richness of parasites. In high-latitude regions of the world, characterizing parasite biodiversity is of particular importance due to the rapid rate at which the climate is changing and potentially shifting parasite distributions and abundances. We sampled a bird community on Prince of Wales Island in southern Alaska, United States, to test for the abundance and richness of haemosporidian and trypanosomatid parasites in this understudied region. We tested for parasites in 67 archived tissue samples of 18 bird species, of which five had not been previously tested for haemosporidians and 11 had not been sampled for trypanosomatids using molecular methods. We recovered two novel mitochondrial genetic lineages of haemosporidians (genera Haemoproteus and Leucocytozoon), and three novel 18S rRNA genotypes belonging to Trypanosoma of uncertain species-level affinities. Surprisingly, we also identified a trypanosomatid from the genus Zelonia, a group of monoxenous parasites of insects, from an avian tissue. While this anomalous record may have been the result of environmental contamination, it nonetheless reflects the first record of Zelonia in the entire Nearctic region.

Keywords: Trypanosoma; Zelonia; Alaska; Biodiversity; Haemosporidian; Island.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval: All experiments were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. Animal handling was approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the American Museum of Natural History. Samples were collected according to permit 19–150 from the State of Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and permit MB779035 - 0 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Consent to participate declaration: Not applicable Consent to publish declaration: Not applicable Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
A maximum likelihood phylogeny of all haemosporidian cytb genetic lineages that have been detected in Alaska, U.S.A., including two novel lineages detected in this study. Clades in which haemosporidian lineages that were detected in this study are found are expanded; haplotypes found in this study are highlighted, and novel haplotypes are highlighted and denoted with a star. Nodes with ultrafast bootstrap support of ≥ 95 are labeled with a black circle
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
A maximum likelihood phylogeny of trypanosomatid 18S rRNA sequences. Genotypes detected in this study are labeled within red boxes; other included sequences were obtained from GenBank including all unique genotypes from Galen et al. (2020), and all previously sequenced Zelonia isolates. For Zelonia isolates, the host species from which the isolate was detected is represented graphically (if host species was recorded). All host images were obtained from www.phylopic.org. Nodes with ultrafast bootstrap support of ≥ 95 are labeled with a black circle
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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