Preferential Host Switching by Primate Lentiviruses Can Account for Phylogenetic Similarity with the Primate Phylogeny

Abstract

Primate lentiviruses (PLV) from closely related primate species have been observed to be more closely related to each other than to PLV from more distantly related primate species. The current explanation for this observation is the codivergence hypothesis; that is, the divergence of a virus lineage results from the divergence of the host lineage. We show that, alternatively, frequent cross-species transmission of PLV, coupled with a tendency for more closely related primate species to exchange viruses "successfully," can result in apparent codivergence. This host-switching hypothesis reconciles several puzzling observations related to the evolution of PLV.

Bayesian Coalescent Analysis Reveals a High Rate of Molecular Evolution in GB Virus C

“…Such matching could also be obtained by host-jumping if the probabilities of such events are higher among more closely related hosts, which may represent an important generality in the biology of cross-species transmission (Kuiken et al 2006), or occurs more frequently among those species that inhabit overlapping (sympatric) geographical distributions. Indeed, successful host-jumping of viruses has been previously documented among primates (Charleston and Robertson 2002) including the simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs) (Wertheim and Worobey 2007). Our observation of phylogenetic incongruence in GBV-A indicates that rates of nucleotide substitution in the GB viruses should not be estimated utilizing the divergence times of their primate hosts.…”

Australian spiny mountain crayfish and their temnocephalan ectosymbionts: an ancient association on the edge of coextinction?

“…This is comparable to the ages of the far-northern and northern crayfish clades (figure 2 and electronic supplementary material, figure S17) dated to 79 Ma (BCI 56 -106 Ma) and 50 Ma (BCI 35-68 Ma, electronic supplementary material, figures S1 and S2) respectively, and is compatible with an ancient codivergence event (electronic supplementary material, figure S8). There is some evidence for preferential [50] (or 'clade-limited' [53]) host switching (a phylogenetically and geographically limited host switch) between the two major northern Euastacus lineages (electronic supplementary material, figure S8), because the Temnosewellia species associated with these lineages form a monophyletic group, whereas the northern and far-northern Euastacus clades constitute a paraphyletic grade (figure 2 and electronic supplementary material, figure S17). Topologically similar patterns of divergence between more southerly Euastacus and Temnosewellia species are compatible primarily with codivergence events (figure 2a).…”

“…Pairwise cophylogeny correlation tests [49] were conducted using TREEMAP v. 3 [50] to determine if the phylogenies of associated crayfish and temnocephalans were more similar than expected by chance. This tests the statistical significance of pairwise distance correlations between associated subtrees, by comparison against an expected random distribution (generated by repeatedly randomizing the symbiont tree).…”

A transitional endogenous lentivirus from the genome of a basal primate and implications for lentivirus evolution

“…However, the apparent codivergence of haplorrhine and strepsirrhine lentivirus lineages does not necessarily require the common ancestor of primate lentiviruses to be as old as that of their hosts; it could also reflect the geographic isolation of African and Malagasy primates subsequent to cross-species transmission (26,27). The periodic colonization of Madagascar by groups of terrestrial mammals subsequent to the arrival of strepsirrhine primates indicates that limited opportunities for terrestrial transfer of lentiviruses between the two regions could have arisen throughout the Cenozoic Era (23), either by direct primate-to-primate contact or via a nonprimate vector (model 2, Fig.…”