Morphology, phylogeny, and taxonomy of two species of colonial volvocine green algae from Lake Victoria, Tanzania

PLoS One. 2019 Nov 11;14(11):e0224269. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0224269. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

The biodiversity and taxonomy of colonial volvocine green algae are important in ancient lakes in tropical regions. However, few taxonomic studies of these algae have been conducted in African ancient lakes. Here, we describe two species of colonial volvocine green algae in cultures originating from water samples from Lake Victoria, an ancient lake in Africa. One was identified as an undescribed morphological species of Eudorina; E. compacta sp. nov. This new species can be distinguished from other Eudorina species by its compactly arranged vegetative cells that form a hollow ellipsoidal colony. The other was identified as Colemanosphaera charkowiensis. The genus Colemanosphaera is new to Africa.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Biodiversity
  • Chlorophyta / genetics*
  • Evolution, Molecular*
  • Lakes
  • Phylogeny*
  • Tanzania

Grants and funding

This study was supported by a Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (grant numbers 16H02518 for HN and 17H04606 for MN) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)/Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI (https://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-grants/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.