Phylogenetic assessment of the type species of genusDiesing, 1839 (Digenea: Notocotylidae) and other congeners from some Palearctic wetland birds.

Abstract

Notocotylidae is a family of digeneans with some aberrant morphological features (absence of ventral sucker), which as sexual adults parasitise herbivorous and molluscivorous birds and mammals. The phylogenetics and taxonomy of this family have many unresolved problems concerning the relatedness of genera and species and the reliability of identification of specimens for which molecular data are available. The aim of this study is morphological and molecular characterisation of the type species ofDiesing, 1839 (Diesing, 1839) and its two congeners,(Noble, 1933) andsp., and verification of the monophyly of the genuswithin the taxonomic boundaries established in the recent revision.was collected from a Greater White-fronted Goose(Scopoli, 1769) taken down in the Russian Karelia, and the other two digenean species were derived from European CootsLinnaeus, 1758, from different locations in Eurasia (Eastern Europe and the Far East). We provide detailed morphological descriptions of the examined digeneans, supplemented with original line drawings.sp. is morphologically similar tobut differs in cirrus sac length. Phylogenetic inference based on thegene dataset placeswithin a well-supported clade comprising several congeners, whereasis recovered outside this assemblage, forming a closer phylogenetic association withIzrailskaia, Besprozvannykh, Tatonova, Nguyen and Ngo, 2019. Thus, our data do not support the monophyly of the genus