A Case Study of the Morphological and Molecular Variation within a Ciliate Genus: Taxonomic Descriptions of Three <i>Dysteria</i> Species (Ciliophora, Cyrtophoria), with the Establishment of a New Species
Three <i>Dysteria</i> species, <i>D. crassipes</i> Claparède & Lachmann, 1859; <i>D. brasiliensis</i> Faria et al., 1922; and <i>D. paracrassipes</i> n. sp., were collected from subtropical coastal waters of the East China Sea, near Ningbo, China....
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2022-02-01
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| Series: | International Journal of Molecular Sciences |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/23/3/1764 |
| Summary: | Three <i>Dysteria</i> species, <i>D. crassipes</i> Claparède & Lachmann, 1859; <i>D. brasiliensis</i> Faria et al., 1922; and <i>D. paracrassipes</i> n. sp., were collected from subtropical coastal waters of the East China Sea, near Ningbo, China. The three species were studied based on their living morphology, infraciliature, and molecular data. The new species <i>D. paracrassipes</i> n. sp. is very similar to <i>D. crassipes</i> in most morphological features except the preoral kinety, which is double-rowed in the new species (vs. single-rowed in <i>D. crassipes</i>). The difference in the small ribosomal subunit sequences (SSU rDNA) between these two species is 56 bases, supporting the establishment of the new species. The Ningbo population of <i>D. crassipes</i> is highly similar in morphology to other known populations. Nevertheless, the SSU rDNA sequences of these populations are very different, indicating high genetic diversity and potentially cryptic species. <i>Dysteria brasiliensis</i> is cosmopolitan with many described populations worldwide and four deposited SSU rDNA sequences. The present work supplies morphological and molecular information from five subtropical populations of <i>D. brasiliensis</i> that bear identical molecular sequences but show significant morphological differences. The findings of this study provide an opportunity to improve understanding of the morphological and genetic diversity of ciliates. |
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| ISSN: | 1661-6596 1422-0067 |