New Species of Monocercus Villot 1982 from Sorex monticola collected from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico
Abstract
Shrews, small insectivorous mammals, host a diversity of tapeworms mostly in the family Hymenolepididae, but one genus is in the Dilepididae (i.e. Monocercus). Monocercus in North America is greatly understudied, with only one described species, Monocercus soricis. In the fall of 2015, we collected 15 montane shrews (Sorex monticola) from Cowles, New Mexico in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. From two individuals, we identified a new species of Monocercus. Morphological characteristics, 28S rDNA sequences, and complete mitochondrial (mt) genome sequences were used to differentiate this new species from M. soricis and Eurasian species. We also sequenced, assembled, and annotated the mt genome of the new species. The mitochondrial genome was assembled from Illumina HiSeq whole genome sequence data. Bioinformatic programs NOVOPlasty and Geneious were used to isolate and assemble the mt genomes, which were annotated using both Geneious (protein coding genes (12) and rRNAs (2)) and ARWEN (tRNAs (22)).
New Species of Monocercus Villot 1982 from Sorex monticola collected from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico
Poster Session 2 (Henderson Library)
Shrews, small insectivorous mammals, host a diversity of tapeworms mostly in the family Hymenolepididae, but one genus is in the Dilepididae (i.e. Monocercus). Monocercus in North America is greatly understudied, with only one described species, Monocercus soricis. In the fall of 2015, we collected 15 montane shrews (Sorex monticola) from Cowles, New Mexico in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. From two individuals, we identified a new species of Monocercus. Morphological characteristics, 28S rDNA sequences, and complete mitochondrial (mt) genome sequences were used to differentiate this new species from M. soricis and Eurasian species. We also sequenced, assembled, and annotated the mt genome of the new species. The mitochondrial genome was assembled from Illumina HiSeq whole genome sequence data. Bioinformatic programs NOVOPlasty and Geneious were used to isolate and assemble the mt genomes, which were annotated using both Geneious (protein coding genes (12) and rRNAs (2)) and ARWEN (tRNAs (22)).
