Kalinella apyrenoidosa var. japonica Darienko & Pröschold, 2019

Darienko, Tatyana & Pröschold, Thomas, 2019, The genus Jaagichlorella Reisigl (Trebouxiophyceae, Chlorophyta) and its close relatives: an evolutionary puzzle, Phytotaxa 388 (1), pp. 47-68 : 65

Kalinella apyrenoidosa var. japonica Darienko & Pröschold var. nov. ( Fig. 7K–R )

Description: Young cells are spherical or sometimes slightly irregular, 4.6–5.5 μm in size, with relatively thick cell wall. Chloroplast of young cells deep cup-shaped, without incisions covering 2/3 of the cell. Chloroplasts contain a thylakoid-free zone, which could be interpreted as pyrenoid, located in the middle of chloroplast, small, indistinct, without visible starch grains.

Mature vegetative cells are mostly spherical, only sometimes ovoid or irregular, 6.4–7.3 μm in diameter, cell wall with age becomes thicker and can produce small drop-shaped, apical thickness. Chloroplast is thick, dark-green, covering most of the cell, sometimes removed in the bottom part of the cell wall. Old cells are spherical, 8.2-9.1 μm in diameter.

Reproduction by unequal sized autospores, in even and odd numbers - 2 (3) - 4 (8). Autosporangia mostly spherical, sometimes irregular, 8.2–10.0 μm in size. Liberation of autospores by rupture of the mother cell wall. Remains of sporangial cell wall are usually bag-shaped and stick on the cell wall of the daughter cells. SSU and ITS rDNA sequences (GenBank: MH780948) and ITS-2 Barcode BC- 8 in Fig. 3 .

Type locality: Epiphytic algal growth on bark tree, Japan.

Holotype (designated here): The strain SAG 2203 is cryopreserved in a metabolic inactive state at the Culture Collection of Algae ( SAG), University of Göttingen, Germany.

Iconotype (designated here to support the holotype): Fig. 7P in this study.

Etymology: The epithet of this variety indicates its origin ( Japan).

Figures

FIGURE 3. Comparison of the conserved region of ITS-2 among the species of Jaagichlorella and Kalinella. Extraction of this region and translation into a number code for its usage as barcode. The ‘/’ indicated the position of the site loop in Helix III, which we excluded from the barcode. Number code for each base pair: 1 = A-U; 2 = U-A; 3 = G-C; 4 = C-G; 5 = G•U; 6 = U•G; 7 = pyrimidine-pyrimidine mismatch; 8 = deletion, single or unpaired bases. The phylogenetic tree shown was calculated using the neighbor-joining method based on the data set (69 number-coded positions of 11 haplotypes) using PAUP 4.0b10.

FIGURE 7. Morphology and phenotypic plasticity of Jaagichlorella sphaerica (UTEX 2485; A.–J.) and Kalinella apyrenoidosa var. japonica (SAG 2203; K.–R.); scale bar = 10 μm.