Fig. 3

Chromosomal synteny among parasitic flatworms. Comparison between the tapeworms Hymenolepis microstoma and Echinococcus multilocularis. a A high level of synteny not only of scaffold occupancy among the chromosomes, but also of their arrangement within chromosomes, as indicated by their positions arrayed along the diagonal. Comparison between tapeworms and the human blood fluke Schistosoma mansoni. b A high level of conservation among chromosomes, but within chromosomes there is little apparent synteny among the scaffolds. c Their chromosomes are represented by the deduced ancestral linkage groups (‘Nigon’ units) from which we infer that the H. microstoma karyotype resulted from the fusion of individual chromosomes still present in E. multilocularis and S. mansoni