Title Close relationship of Plasmodium sequences detected from South American pampas deer ( Ozotoceros bezoarticus ) to Plasmodium spp . in North American white-tailed deer

We report, for the first time, the presence of ungulate malaria parasites in South America. We conducted PCRbased surveys of blood samples of multiple deer species and water buffalo from Brazil and detected Plasmodium sequences from pampas deer (Ozotoceros bezoarticus) samples. Phylogenic analysis revealed that the obtained sequences are closely related to the Plasmodium odocoilei clade 2 sequence from North American white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Nucleotide differences suggest that malaria parasites in South American pampas deer and North American P. odocoilei clade 2 branched more recently than the Great American Interchange. Plasmodium parasites of even-toed ungulates have been reported from Africa (duiker [Sylvicapra grimmia], marshbuck [Tragelaphus spekii], and goat [Capra aegagrus hircus]; van den Berghe, 1937; reviewed in Garnham, 1966), Asia (water buffalo [Bubalus bubalis] and mouse deer [Tragulus javanicus]; reviewed in Garnham, 1966), and North America (white-tailed deer [Odocoileus virginianus]; Kuttler et al., 1967; Garnham and Kuttler, 1980) based on microscopic observations. In 2016, three groups reported the first molecular analyses of this group of malaria parasites (reviewed in Templeton et al., 2016b). Martinsen et al. (2016) detected two Plasmodium sequences, termed P. odocoilei clade 1 and 2 based on the report by Kuttler et al. (1967), from whitetailed deer and Anopheles mosquitoes in several locations in the United States of America (Martinsen et al., 2016). Boundenga et al. (2016) reported Plasmodium sequences from duiker antelope (Cephalophus spp.) in Africa (Boundenga et al., 2016). Thirdly, Templeton et al. (2016a) detected two distinct Plasmodium sequences from water buffalo in Thailand and Vietnam (Templeton et al., 2016a), which were provisionally called Plasmodium bubalis types I and II based on a report in India (Sheather, 1919); and one sequence from a goat in Zambia, provisionally called Plasmodium caprae based upon a report in Africa (de Mello and Paes, 1923). It was shown that DNA sequences from the three studies formed a monophyletic clade within haemosporidian parasites, distinct from a clade containing other mammalian and avian/reptile Plasmodium parasites (Templeton et al., 2016a,b). Based on the divergence of the two groups of Plasmodium sequences detected from white-tailed deer and mosquitoes in North America, Martinsen et al. (2016) suggested that they likely represented distinct species and that the ancestor of these parasites migrated from Siberia to North America with their host deer. This model was based on the estimated divergence time of 2.3–6 million years ago (MYA), consistent with the estimated period ancestral deer crossed the Bering Land Bridge to North America 4.2 to 5.7 MYA (Gilbert et al., 2006). During the Great https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijppaw. 2018.01. 001 Received 13 November 2017; Received in revised form 1 January 2018; Accepted 3 January 2018 ☆ Nucleotide sequences determined from this study were deposited to DDBJ/ENA/GenBank with the accession numbers: LC326033 (BRDeer_87), LC326034 (BRDeer_89) and LC326035 (BRdeer_88). ∗ Corresponding author. Department of Protozoology, Institute of Tropical Medicine (NEKKEN), Nagasaki University, Sakamoto 1-12-4, Nagasaki 852-8523, Japan. E-mail address: okaneko@nagasaki-u.ac. jp (O. Kaneko). IJP: Parasites and Wildlife 7 (2018) 44–47 2213-2244/ © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Australian Society for Parasitology. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/). T