Abstract
In diatoms the use of molecular tools to corroborate traditional (morphological) identification offers a new perspective in the field of biogeography. This manuscript reports the first record of the raphid pennate diatom Nitzschia volvendirostrata along the coast of Mexico, which in turn represents an expansion of the geographic range along the American continent. The cells were isolated from benthic samples taken from Balandra lagoon, La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico and cultured as a monoclonal culture. Morphology and morphometry of the diatom obtained from light and electron microscopy reveal that they correspond to the original description of N. volvendirostrata and also its chloroplast sequences, rbcL and psbC, showed 98.7 to 100 % similarity and a close phylogenetic relationship with N. volvendirostrata. The reported places for this taxon show that it has a tropical-temperate biogeographical affinity.
Highlights
The accessibility and advances of electron microscopy and molecular tools for identifying and describing species has opened this up even to non-specialists, and nowadays this approach is considered as classic (Medlin 2018; Blanco 2020)
A second new species of diatom was described from a sample isolated and cultured from a hypersaline evaporation pond at the Guerrero Negro Saltworks, Baja California Sur (López-Fuerte et al 2020)
In this paper we report the first record of N. volvendirostrata on the American continent with a sample collected from the coastal lagoon of Balandra in the Gulf of California located along the southern coast of the Baja California
Summary
The accessibility and advances of electron microscopy and molecular tools for identifying and describing species has opened this up even to non-specialists, and nowadays this approach is considered as classic (Medlin 2018; Blanco 2020). The process of isolation, culture and maintenance of diatom strains in the collections of microalgae could be used as complementary to microscopy and molecular tools to obtain accurate and reliable information on the identity of a taxon. This information could be used to explore autoecological. A substrate considered exotic (stone fish skin Scorpaena mystes) presented a new species of benthic diatom for the California Gulf (López-Fuerte and SiqueirosBeltrones 2018). A second new species of diatom was described from a sample isolated and cultured from a hypersaline evaporation pond at the Guerrero Negro Saltworks, Baja California Sur (López-Fuerte et al 2020).
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