Morphology and phylogenetic relationships of Micractinium (Chlorellaceae, Trebouxiophyceae) taxa, including three new species from Antarctica

Abstract

Three new species of the genus Micractinium were collected from five localities on the South Shetland Islands in maritime Antarctica, and their morphological and molecular characteristics were investigated. The vegetative cells are spherical to ellipsoidal and a single chloroplast is parietal with a pyrenoid. Because of their simple morphology, no conspicuous morphological characters of new species were recognized under light microscopy. However, molecular phylogenetic relationships were inferred from the concatenated small subunit rDNA, and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequence data indicated that the Antarctic microalgal strains are strongly allied to the well-supported genus Micractinium, including M. pusillum, the type species of the genus, and three other species in the genus. The secondary structure of ITS2 and compensatory base changes were used to identify and describe six Antarctic Micractinium strains. Based on their morphological and molecular characteristics, we characterized three new species of Micractinium: M. simplicissimum sp. nov., M. singularis sp. nov., and M. variabile sp. nov.