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Cryptic Diversity in Paramecium multimicronucleatum Revealed with a Polyphasic Approach

Paramecium (Ciliophora) systematics is well studied, and about twenty morphological species have been described. The morphological species may include several genetic species. However, molecular phylogenetic analyses revealed that the species diversity within Paramecium could be even higher and has...

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Autores principales: Melekhin, Maksim, Yakovleva, Yulia, Lebedeva, Natalia, Nekrasova, Irina, Nikitashina, Liubov, Castelli, Michele, Mayén-Estrada, Rosaura, Romanovich, Anna E., Petroni, Giulio, Potekhin, Alexey
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9143557/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35630417
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms10050974
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author Melekhin, Maksim
Yakovleva, Yulia
Lebedeva, Natalia
Nekrasova, Irina
Nikitashina, Liubov
Castelli, Michele
Mayén-Estrada, Rosaura
Romanovich, Anna E.
Petroni, Giulio
Potekhin, Alexey
author_facet Melekhin, Maksim
Yakovleva, Yulia
Lebedeva, Natalia
Nekrasova, Irina
Nikitashina, Liubov
Castelli, Michele
Mayén-Estrada, Rosaura
Romanovich, Anna E.
Petroni, Giulio
Potekhin, Alexey
author_sort Melekhin, Maksim
collection PubMed
description Paramecium (Ciliophora) systematics is well studied, and about twenty morphological species have been described. The morphological species may include several genetic species. However, molecular phylogenetic analyses revealed that the species diversity within Paramecium could be even higher and has raised a problem of cryptic species whose statuses remain uncertain. In the present study, we provide the morphological and molecular characterization of two novel Paramecium species. While Paramecium lynni n. sp., although morphologically similar to P. multimicronucleatum, is phylogenetically well separated from all other Paramecium species, Paramecium fokini n. sp. appears to be a cryptic sister species to P. multimicronucleatum. The latter two species can be distinguished only by molecular methods. The number and structure of micronuclei, traditionally utilized to discriminate species in Paramecium, vary not only between but also within each of the three studied species and, thus, cannot be considered a reliable feature for species identification. The geographic distribution of the P. multimicronucleatum and P. fokini n. sp. strains do not show defined patterns, still leaving space for a role of the geographic factor in initial speciation in Paramecium. Future findings of new Paramecium species can be predicted from the molecular data, while morphological characteristics appear to be unstable and overlapping at least in some species.
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spelling pubmed-91435572022-05-29 Cryptic Diversity in Paramecium multimicronucleatum Revealed with a Polyphasic Approach Melekhin, Maksim Yakovleva, Yulia Lebedeva, Natalia Nekrasova, Irina Nikitashina, Liubov Castelli, Michele Mayén-Estrada, Rosaura Romanovich, Anna E. Petroni, Giulio Potekhin, Alexey Microorganisms Article Paramecium (Ciliophora) systematics is well studied, and about twenty morphological species have been described. The morphological species may include several genetic species. However, molecular phylogenetic analyses revealed that the species diversity within Paramecium could be even higher and has raised a problem of cryptic species whose statuses remain uncertain. In the present study, we provide the morphological and molecular characterization of two novel Paramecium species. While Paramecium lynni n. sp., although morphologically similar to P. multimicronucleatum, is phylogenetically well separated from all other Paramecium species, Paramecium fokini n. sp. appears to be a cryptic sister species to P. multimicronucleatum. The latter two species can be distinguished only by molecular methods. The number and structure of micronuclei, traditionally utilized to discriminate species in Paramecium, vary not only between but also within each of the three studied species and, thus, cannot be considered a reliable feature for species identification. The geographic distribution of the P. multimicronucleatum and P. fokini n. sp. strains do not show defined patterns, still leaving space for a role of the geographic factor in initial speciation in Paramecium. Future findings of new Paramecium species can be predicted from the molecular data, while morphological characteristics appear to be unstable and overlapping at least in some species. MDPI 2022-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC9143557/ /pubmed/35630417 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms10050974 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Melekhin, Maksim
Yakovleva, Yulia
Lebedeva, Natalia
Nekrasova, Irina
Nikitashina, Liubov
Castelli, Michele
Mayén-Estrada, Rosaura
Romanovich, Anna E.
Petroni, Giulio
Potekhin, Alexey
Cryptic Diversity in Paramecium multimicronucleatum Revealed with a Polyphasic Approach
title Cryptic Diversity in Paramecium multimicronucleatum Revealed with a Polyphasic Approach
title_full Cryptic Diversity in Paramecium multimicronucleatum Revealed with a Polyphasic Approach
title_fullStr Cryptic Diversity in Paramecium multimicronucleatum Revealed with a Polyphasic Approach
title_full_unstemmed Cryptic Diversity in Paramecium multimicronucleatum Revealed with a Polyphasic Approach
title_short Cryptic Diversity in Paramecium multimicronucleatum Revealed with a Polyphasic Approach
title_sort cryptic diversity in paramecium multimicronucleatum revealed with a polyphasic approach
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9143557/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35630417
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms10050974
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