Morphology and morphometry
Based on the morphological analysis, the metacercaria was identified as belonging to genus Microphallus (Family: Microphallidae Ward, 1901) and is describe as follows.
Description (based on 5 specimens, Fig. 1a, b): Encysted form rounded in shape, thin-walled, 0.55–0.83 mm in diameter. Most of the adult organs developed in metacercarial stage; excysted metacercaria having globular body; tegument spinous, density of spines decreasing from anterior to posterior end; oral sucker subterminal; ventral sucker single, post equatorial; prepharynx present; pharynx well developed, muscular; oesophagus long, medium sized; intestinal caeca short, divergent just anterior to ventral sucker; testes two, postovarian, symmetrical, on each lateral side of body; seminal vesicle ovoid, intercaecal; ovary dextral to ventral sucker; vitellaria in two groups, each having cluster of 6–7 on lateral side of body, posterior or lateral to each testis; excretory pore terminal.
Morphometric measurements of various body parts of the mounted metacercaria are given in Table 2.
Molecular study
Molecular characterization and analysis
The selected marker regions were amplified and the generated sequences were deposited in GenBank [Accession numbers: KF738448, KF738451]. The amplicon size of ITS2 and 28S was 395 bp and 1002 bp in length, respectively. They were then compared with various Microphallidae taxa (a total of 28 accession numbers) retrieved from GenBank for analysis (Table 1). The metacercaria under the present study stands close to Microphallus spp, with high sequence identities of 92.8% (ITS2) with M. indicus and 91.6% (28S) with M. calidris (Tables 3, 4). The query sequences, when compared with M. indicus Indian isolate, revealed 25 nucleotide differences (with 10 transitions, 7 transversions and 8 indels) and 119 nucleotide differences (with 38 transitions, 35 transversions and 46 indels) for ITS2 and 28S, respectively (Table 5).
Phylogenetic analysis
Phylogenetic trees were constructed using the ITS2 and 28S data of microphallid taxa available in GenBank (Table 1). The ML and NJ phylogenetic trees constructed for marker genes depicted the same topology of taxa with minor differences. In the analysis of ITS2 sequences, the NJ tree is shown with sum of branch length = 0.97763611 (Fig. 2a), which was drawn on scale, branch lengths in the same units with those of evolutionary distances used to infer the phylogenetic tree. The ML tree with the highest log likelihood (-1571.3102) is shown (Fig. 2b), which was drawn to scale, with branch lengths measured in the number of substitutions per site. Similarly, for 28S sequence, the NJ tree with sum of branch length = 0.67117473 (Fig. 3a) and ML tree with the highest log likelihood (-4108.0370) (Fig. 3b) are shown. All the trees revealed that the present microphallid fluke clades with M. indicus, with significant bootstrap values of 98-100% (Figs.2a, b and 3a, b). In all trees, the outgroup, genus Clinostomum, formed a seperate clade.
ITS2 RNA secondary structures analysis
The ITS2 secondary structure of the presently studied Microphallus sp. shows the typical four-helix model with helix I and IV being short; helix III- the longest and showing UGG motifs and helix II showing U-U mismatch (Fig. 4). The Profile neighbour joining (ProfDistS) analysis of the ITS2 secondary sequences also showed the same topology as that shown by the primary sequence analysis (Fig. 5), the present metacercaria Microphallus sp. clading with M. indicus with significant bootstrap value (91%).