First Record of Amphisiella milnei (Ciliophora, Stichotrichida) from Korea

Abstract

A marine ciliate Amphisiella milnei (Kahl, 1932) Horváth, 1950 was discovered from the tidal pool of Baekdo Island, South Korea. The existence of extra cirri between leftmost frontal cirrus and buccal cirrus discriminates this species from its congeners. Its morphological features are described as follows: body size in vivo 110-130×35-45 μm; elongate rectangular to elliptical in shape; two large and several small ring-shaped structures; yellowish cortical granules arranged irregularly on ventral side but longitudinally along dorsal kineties on dorsal side; 34-40 adoral membranelles, 3 frontal cirri, 1 buccal cirrus, 1 parabuccal cirrus, usually 2 extra cirri behind leftmost frontal cirrus, and 3 frontoventral cirri; amphisiellid median cirral row composed of 25-31 cirri with 27-36 left and 27-44 right marginal cirri; usually 5 transverse cirri and 2 pretransverse cirri with 7 dorsal kineties; two macronuclear nodules. In addition to, 18S rDNA sequence of A. milnei was analyzed to understand its phylogenetic relationship.