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Polymastigidae is one of the five families of oxymonads (Metamonada, Preaxostyla). It includes small flagellates inhabiting the digestive tract of insects. Recently obtained molecular phylogenetic data have questioned the monophyly of this group. The type genus of the family Polymastigidae is Polymastix. The phylogenetic position of this genus has not been studied yet, although this information could significantly help to clarify the relationships within this group. This work provides the first sequence data of this genus, which we have obtained using a single- cell genome amplification and subsequent whole genome sequencing on Illumina HiSeq X Ten (Macrogene) from three individuals of P. melolonthae inhabiting the posterior hindgut of crane fly larvae. Phylogenetic analysis based on the gene for 18S rRNA, EF-1α and HSP90 yielded several roughly equally probable hypotheses about the position of this genus within Oxymonadida. The first of them places the genus Polymastix in a close proximity to the genus Streblomastix, according to the second hypothesis, Polymastix is sister to Termitimonas travisae. A characteristic feature of this protist is ectosymbiotic bacteria attached to its surface. These were necessarily amplified and sequenced together with their hosts, which allowed us to obtain sequence...

During the evolution some groups of organisms have become coevolutionary associated with other groups, as is the case of host symbiont systems. To explore coevolutionary history of hosts and their associated symbionts, phylogenetic reconstruction of symbionts and phylogenetic reconstruction of hosts are usually compared. Coevolution is described by coevolutionary events (cospeciation, host switch, duplication, failure to diverge events and linage sorting events). The aim of this work was to test the suitability of MLST method for the complex of entomopathogenic nematodes from the genus Steinernema (with detailed analysis of Steinernema feltiae) and their symbiotic bacteria Xenorhabdus bovienii and subsequently use cophylogenetic comparative analysis to determine their level of cospeciation.