Morphology and SSU rRNA gene sequence of the new marine ciliate, Amphisiella nov. spec. (Ciliophora, Stichotrichida, Amphisiellidae) from Korea

Abstract

New marine ciliate is discovered from Baek-do island, South Korea. Based on morphological and molecular analyses, our results confirm that the new ciliate belongs to Amphisiella and its morphological features are as follows: body ellipsoid in shape colourless to dark grey in cell colour at low magnification, size in vivo about 120 × 40 &micro m body flexible and densely distributed cortical granules on the whole body contractile vacuoles not observed about 36 adoral membranelles, nine frontal cirri, one buccal cirrus, 27 amphisiellid median cirri, five transverse cirri with two pre-transverse cirri, 32 left and 32 right marginal cirri, seven dorsal kineties, and two macronuclear nodules with two micronuclei. This new species have higher similarity with its congener A. annulata and differs mainly by number of adoral membranelles (36 vs. 50), frontal cirri (nine vs. seven), amphisiellid median cirri (27 vs. 47), and small subunit ribosomal RNA gene (dissimilarity with Chinese and Korean population of A. annulata, about 4.1%).in shape colourless to dark grey in cell colour at low magnification, size in vivo about 120 × 40 &micro m body flexible and densely distributed cortical granules on the whole body contractile vacuoles not observed about 36 adoral membranelles, nine frontal cirri, one buccal cirrus, 27 amphisiellid median cirri, five transverse cirri with two pre-transverse cirri, 32 left and 32 right marginal cirri, seven dorsal kineties, and two macronuclear nodules with two micronuclei. This new species have higher similarity with its congener A. annulata and differs mainly by number of adoral membranelles (36 vs. 50), frontal cirri (nine vs. seven), amphisiellid median cirri (27 vs. 47), and small subunit ribosomal RNA gene (dissimilarity with Chinese and Korean population of A. annulata, about 4.1%).