Figure 3

Eukaryotic pathogens. Eukaryotic pathogen life forms are clearly dominated by the fungi and protists. Within the Fungi, the phylum Ascomycota has many human, animal, and plant pathogens and is a major source of toxins. Protist species are responsible for globally important diseases such as the malaria-causing Plasmodium species and the Leishmania and Trypanosoma species that cause significant mortality in the developing world. The eukaryotic phylogeny tree is based on ribosomal and housekeeping gene sequence analysis [70], but different taxonomy levels are simultaneously represented as the topology has not yet been reliably determined.