Phylogeny of five fungus-like protoctistan Phytophthora species, inferred from the internal transcribed spacers of ribosomal DNA.

Ribosomal DNA variation was used to study evolutionary relationships among five fungal-like protoctistan Phytophthora species. On the basis of morphological and ecological characteristics, four of these species--P. palmivora, P. megakarya, P. capsici, and P. citrophthora--were once thought to be related. Variation within a species was extensively studied in a fifth, outgroup species--P. cinnamomi--known, on the basis of ecological, isozyme, and mitochondrial DNA studies, to be variable. Internal transcribed spacer regions (ITS I, between the 18S and 5.8S rDNAs; and ITS II, between the 5.8S and 25S rDNAs) from 27 isolates of these five species were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction amplification and direct sequencing. Intraspecific variability was undetected or low. Interspecific nucleotide difference was 0.3%-14.6%, and comparisons of variable regions permitted the evaluation of phylogenetic relationships among species. Both neighbor-joining and parsimony analysis of ITS variability support a close relationship between cacao isolates of P. capsici and P. citrophthora and a common lineage for P. palmivora and P. megakarya. Large distance values were estimated between P. cinnamomi and the other species. Inferred relationships based on ITS variability were compared with those based on other characters. The catalog of sequences provides the information necessary to design taxon-specific probes potentially useful in taxonomic, ecological, and population-level studies.