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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Nov 5.
Published in final edited form as: Annu Rev Microbiol. 2020 Sep 8;74:39–63. doi: 10.1146/annurev-micro-020518-115628

Figure 7.

Figure 7

Evolutionary relationships of ape and human P. malariae parasites. A maximum likelihood tree (midpoint rooted) of published (42, 54, 64, 66, 70, 75, 93) and newly derived (asterisks; GenBank accession numbers MN175636–MN175639) mitochondrial (cytb) sequences (576 bp) from chimpanzee (red), gorilla (blue), bonobo (purple), and mosquito (orange) samples as well as P. brasilianum (grey) and representative human P. malariae (black) strains is shown. The phylogeny depicts three lineages of P. malariae and P malariae-related strains (labelled at the side), one of which (M2) is likely to represent a new species tentatively named P. africanum sp. nov. All human P. malariae sequences fall into the M1 lineage together with P. brasilianum and parasite sequences from some captive apes. In trees of longer (2 kb) mitochondrial (76) and nuclear (120) loci (not shown), parasites from wild chimpanzees and gorillas form a distinct M1-like lineage. It is currently unknown whether wild apes also harbor M1 parasites, and whether M1 and M1-like parasites form two sister clades or one falls into the radiation of the other. Bootstrap values greater than 70% are denoted. The scale bar indicates nucleotide substitutions per site.