Abstract
SUMMARY A new filamentous marine red alga, Kuwaitiella rubra gen. et sp. nov. (Bangiales, Rhodophyta), is described from Kuwait in the north-western Arabian Gulf (also referred to as the Persian Gulf). It was found on a submerged fishing line. The intensively red upright thallus of up to 1 cm in length consists of cells containing a single stellate plastid. The thallus is initially uniseriate but becomes biseriate in its distal part upon transformation into globular reproductive cells, possibly archaeospores. The biseriate fertile part is the only morphological difference from other filamentous species of the Bangiales, in which this region is parenchymatous. In culture, bipolar asymmetric germination of the spores of Kuwaitiella led to a new generation of identical erect thalli, fixed to the substratum by colourless rhizoids. According to phylogenetic analyses of partial small subunit nuclear ribosomal DNA (18S) and of the plastid-encoded ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase large subunit (rbcL), the new species forms an additional lineage of the Bangiales, genetic similarity with other taxa being limited (maximum 91% in SSU and 90% in rbcL). It was no clear member of any known lineage of the Bangiales but was weakly associated with the filamentous species Minerva and Dione from New Zealand. In a SSU phylogeny, it formed a basal branch in the Bangiales and clustered with M. aenigmata and D. arcuata as sister clade to all other species of the order. In a rbcL phylogeny, it was part of a large polytomy of lineages, its closest relative being D. arcuata. Kuwaitiella forms the 8th lineage of filamentous Bangiales detected so far.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 192-202 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Phycological Research |
| Volume | 70 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 28 Jul 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Oct 2022 |
Bibliographical note
ACKNOWLEDGMENTSMany thanks to Bivin Thomas, Pupa Kumai and Hedda Weitz for helping in the laboratory and improving this manuscript, to Ioanna Kosma for diving, to Yusuf Buhadi for assistance during field work, archiving and preparation of herbarium specimens, and to Tatiana Mikhaylova for micrographs of previously collected filamentous red algae from Kuwait. We are grateful to La′ala Kuwait Real Estate Company and especially Mr. Fawaz Al-Marzouq for providing the salinity data. The present work is part of MHH's PhD thesis ‘Macroalgal biodiversity of Kuwait, with special emphasis on the vicinity of desalination plants’ funded by a PhD fellowship from the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences. FCK received support from the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland pooling initiative. MASTS is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011) and contributing institutions. Work of AFP was in part supported by the project IDEALG (France: ANR-10-BTBR-04).
Research Funding
Agence Nationale de la Recherche. Grant Number: 10-BTBR-04
Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences
Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland
IDEALG. Grant Number: ANR-10-BTBR-04
Scottish Funding Council. Grant Number: HR09011
Marine Alliance for Science and Technology
Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences
Keywords
- Bangia
- Kuwait
- plastid ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase large subunit (rbcL)
- small subunit ribosomal DNA (nrSSU)
- Rhodophyta
Access to Document
- Hasan_etal_PR_Kuwaitiella_rubra_gen_VOR
© 2022 The Authors.Phycological Researchpublished by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Japanese Societyof Phycology.This is an open access article under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivsLicense,which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercialand no modifications or adaptations are made.