The Phylogenetic Placement of Oxymonads

The gut microbiome of many termites consists of a diverse range of protists that aid in the digestion of food particles. One of these families of protists is Oxymonadida. This project focuses on finding the evolutionary relationship between oxymonads and their most recent common ancestor, Trimastigidae, by building phylogenetic trees. This project was important because there is a large amount of species of oxymonads. This is because oxymonads adapt to the particular termite it lives in, and there are many species of termites. Understanding each species relationship helps give more knowledge and insight as to where some of the unknown species may go, even though they may not have DNA sequences yet. One unpublished sequence for Microrhopalodina was used in this paper, which previously had no molecular data available. The trees retrieved in this project had some discrepancies compared to previous studies and found an interesting relationship for Microrhopalodina. Microrhopalodina was included in the Oxymonas clade, indicating a very close relationship between the two species. It may even suggest that Microrhopalodina should be considered part of the species Oxymonas. Furthermore, Streblomastix branched in between Monocercomonoides and Trimastigidae, which is a different result than previous papers have found. Streblomastix was previously found to branch between Blattamonas and Monocercomonoides. The most recent paper on Blattamonas stated that they were unsure what family this species belongs to due to its molecular diversity, but its appearance resembles Monocercomonoides which is part of the family Polymastigidae. The trees produced in this project may indicate that Blattamonas belongs in the Polymastigidae family after all.