The Morphology and Phylogeny of Three Diophrys Ciliates Collected from the Subtropical Waters of China, Including a New Species (Ciliophora; Euplotia)

Abstract

Three Diophrys species, D. quadrinucleata n. sp., D. oligothrix Borror, 1965 and D. scutum (Dujardin, 1841) Kahl, 1932, were identified from the subtropical brackish waters in China, their morphology was investigated using live observation and protargol impregnation. D. quadrinucleata n. sp. can be distinguished from the congeners by four ellipsoidal macronuclear nodules. Phylogenetic analyses show that the three species with single marginal cirrus are closely related, namely D. quadrinucleata n. sp., D. apoligothrix Song et al., 2009 and D. japonica Hu, 2008. Our population of D. oligothrix corresponds very well with previous populations in both living morphology and ciliature. However, the SSU rDNA sequences of three well-described populations differ from each other by 11 to 18 nucleotides, indicating that there might be cryptic species in D. oligothrix. Moreover, we provided a detailed description of the symbiotic bacteria/archaeobacteria (?) concentrated on the back surface of D. scutum based on the present population, which was either overlooked or misinterpreted as cortical granules previously.

Journal

Journal ID (publisher-id): JOUC

Title: Journal of Ocean University of China

Publisher: Science Press and Springer (China )

ISSN (Electronic): 1672-5182

Publication date (Electronic): 10 July 2020

Publication date (Print): 01 August 2020

Volume: 19

Issue: 4

Pages: 975-987

Affiliations

¹School of Marine Sciences, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China

²Key Laboratory of Aquatic Biodiversity and Conservation of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430072, China

³Institute of Evolution and Marine Biodiversity, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266003, China

⁴College of Fisheries, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266003, China

Author notes

*Corresponding author: CHEN Xiangrui, E-mail: xiangruichen@ 123456126.com

# The two authors contributed equally to this work.

Article

Publisher ID: s11802-020-4536-8

DOI: 10.1007/s11802-020-4536-8

Copyright statement: Copyright © Ocean University of China, Science Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2020.

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Product

Self URI (journal-page): https://www.springer.com/journal/11802