Flatworms are intriguing subjects for systematic and evolutionary studies because they are ecologically and phylogenetically diverse parasites, some of which cause serious disease in humans and in the animals we grow and harvest as food globally. A systematic revision of the ?fish blood flukes? (Digenea: Aporocotylidae) will underpin the development of a comprehensive and robust phylogeny that tests hypotheses about geographic distribution, coevolution of flatworms and their vertebrate hosts, and the origin of complex life cycles in digenean flatworms. In addition, as a basal blood fluke lineage, resolving phylogenetic relationships of aporocotylids may help further reveal the evolutionary origins of tetrapod blood flukes.
This three-year revisionary systematics project will produce the first global classification system for the fish blood flukes. Aporocotylids comprise emerging, significant aquaculture disease agents among the marine, estuarine, and freshwater fishes they infect worldwide. Fish blood flukes are the aquatic counterpart and close relative to schistosomes that parasitize birds and mammals, including those causing schistosomiasis in 20 million people. This project unites researchers from the US and Australia while simultaneously training two PhD students and several undergraduates in flatworm (phylum Platyhelminthes) taxonomy and systematics.
