Exploring the identity of the Greek Dinophysis cf. acuminata

Abstract

The clarification of the identity of the prominent Dinophysis morphotype in Greek coastal waters, characterized until now as D. cf. acuminata, has become a major challenge since the first DSP outbreak in the year 2000. So far, definite identification of the morphotype at the species level has been a taunting task, since both morphological and common molecular tools have proved fairly inefficient towards this direction. Recently, the mitochondrial gene region encoding for the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (cox1) has been opted for its efficiency to discriminate at the species level within the Dinophysis acuminata complex. Using both ribosomal and mitochondrial genetic sequence data, we have shown that the species D. cf. acuminata described from Greek coastal waters is actually more related to D. ovum. The implications involved with present molecular tools in deciphering taxonomic relationships among species belonging to the genus Dinophysis are also discussed.