Non-Potluck Post from BMC Evolutionary Biology: Malaria parasites of long-tailed macaques in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo: a novel species and demographic and evolutionary histories

Researchers analyzed 43 long-tailed macaques in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo to characterize the demographics and evolutionary history of malaria parasites that they are known harbor and detect possible novel parasite species. Plasmodium spp. mitochondrial genome and apicoplast caseinolytic protease M gene sequencing of long-tailed macaque blood samples was employed to investigate these research interests. A novel parasite population split into two subpopulations including a distinct subpopulation genetically similar to P. inui that was indicated to have evolved through strict coevolution with long-tailed. An expansion event for this subpopulation was estimated to have occurred between 150,000 to 250,000 years ago and the two subpopulations were estimated to have diverged from a common P. inui ancestor about 1.5 million years ago. Lastly, long-tailed macaques were found to be new hosts of P. simiovale, which was previously only known to be hosted by toque monkeys.

https://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-018-1170-9 

- Evan Holmes