Abstract
Nephroselmis is composed by unicellular nanoplanktonic organisms, occurring predominantly in marine environments. Currently, 14 species are taxonomically accepted. Nephroselmis viridis was described in 2011 and strains were isolated from Indic and Pacific Oceans. Since then, it was not recorded in other places. A strain was isolated from coastal waters of Brazil by micropipetting and washing, and cultivated in f/2 medium for morphological observations (light, confocal, SEM and TEM) and molecular phylogeny inferences (maximum likelihood and Bayesian). The cells are asymmetrical, have two unequal flagella, one cup-shaped chloroplast with an eyespot, and a large starch covered pyrenoid. Chloroplast thylakoids intrude into the pyrenoid and organic scales cover all cell body and flagella. Molecular phylogeny (18S rRNA) clustered the isolated strain with other Nephroselmis viridis sequences, and the species is the sister of the N. olivacea, the type species of the genus. Morphology and molecular phylogeny corroborate the strain identification, and it is the first time this species is recorded in Brazil and in the Atlantic Ocean.
Highlights
Nephroselmis was described in 1879 by the typification of Nephroselmis olivacea Stein, and initially was allocated into Cryptophyceae (Parke and Rayns 1964)
Here we report for the first time the occurrence of N. viridis in Atlantic Ocean, isolated from the coast of Brazil, identified by molecular and microscopy tools
The isolated strain is being maintained in f/2 medium (Guillard and Ryther 1962), salinity 32–35, temperature 20 °C (±1), photoperiod of 12 h light/12 h dark, and 80 μE m−2.s−1 radiation
Summary
Nephroselmis was described in 1879 by the typification of Nephroselmis olivacea Stein, and initially was allocated into Cryptophyceae (Parke and Rayns 1964) Further studies moved it to Chlorophyta, and Bourelly, in 1970, classified it as Prasinophyceae (Norris 1980). The class Nephroselmidophyceae (Nephrophyceae) was proposed to accommodate the genus (Cavalier-Smith 1993; Nakayama et al 2007) This class seems to be an early derived clade of the core Chlorophyta (Daugbjerg et al 1995; Nakayama et al 1998; Steinkotter et al 1994; Turmel et al 2009; Turmel et al 1999), keeping a high number of ancestral characters. Sequences for just nine species of this molecular marker are available in Genbank, representing less than 65% of the genus biodiversity
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