Fig. 5

Neighbor-Joining tree showing phylogenetic relationships among the 61 Tp2 gene alleles described in Africa (A01–A63). Tp2 gene alleles obtained from cattle in the present study are indicated by black diamonds. Theileria parva alleles found in cattle with no association with buffalo and in laboratory stocks are coloured in blue, while buffalo-derived and buffalo-associated alleles are depicted in Red. Bootstrap values (> 50%) are shown above branches. The Tp2 homologous sequence of T. annulata (GenBank: TA19865) was used as the outgroup. The numbers in brackets behind allele names denote the number of T. parva isolates carrying the allele. The detailed Tp2 alleles distribution and their corresponding populations/AEZs are presented in Additional file 10: Table S8. Tp2 allele A01 corresponds to isolates identical to Muguga and Serengeti-transformed strains, while Tp2 allele A02 represents isolates identical to Kiambu-5 strain