The mesophilic and psychrotolerant microbiota of the air, soil, water, and bottom sediments of the Kinderlinskaya cave (South Urals, Russia) and the factors affecting the structure of microbial communities were investigated. The pattern of microbial distribution in soils was shown to depend on both the configura tion of the cave and the level of recreational load. The lowest numbers of bacteria and micromycetes were found in the poorly visited, difficult to access sites. Coliform bacteria were revealed in all soil and sediment samples and in some water samples. Micromycetes belonged to 19 genera, with Geomyces pannorum as the dominant species. Air movement was shown to be the main factor affecting the density of the aerial micro biota.

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Chlorella-like green algae that reproduce only asexually by immotile autospores or motile zoospores are the most typical inhabitants of non-aquatic environments. They have a simple morphology that hampers their differentiation, but algae of such habit represent a diverse array of lineages, which are mostly in the classes Chlorophyceae and Trebouxiophyceae. One of these lineages is the order Watanabeales (Watanabea clade; Trebouxiophyceae), which comprises 10 genera that share a distinct mode of reproduction through unequally sized autospores. Most of these genera account for a few species that are rarely recorded in nature. In contrast, the genus Chloroidium is one of the most species-rich and widely distributed members of the order. Three strains of coccoid green alga were isolated during a study of soil algae in the temperate monsoon climate zone of Asia. These strains are described here as a new species, Chloroidium orientalis. SSU and ITS rDNA sequence data, morphological characteristics, and life cycle features differentiate these strains from known members of the genus.

Since the mid-twentieth century, the floristic classification principles are used in the systematization of cyanobacterial-algal coenoses (CAC) (Margalef, 1949; Bukhtiyarova et al., 1996; Khaibullina, 2000; Dell’Uomo, 2010; Golub et al., 2014). The types of cyanobacteria and algae communities of the caves have been identified (Roldan and Hernandez-Marine, 2009), but the floristic classification was not applied. Some attempts to classify of CAC caves using the Braun-Blanquet approach have been made, but the identified types were non-ranking, and the amount of initial data for their description was relatively small (Abdullin, 2009).

A new coccoid cyanobacterium Aliterella vladivostokensis sp. nov. was described from an urban aerophytic habitat in a temperate monsoon climate (Vladivostok, Russia) using a polyphasic approach. Phylogenetic analyses based on the 16S rRNA gene sequences confirmed that our isolate was a member of the Aliterella genus clade. Aliterella species are hardly distinguishable from each other morphologically and were described from highly contrasting natural and artificial environments with only a few records from several continents. Despite high similarity of morphometric data for A. vladivostokensis and A. antarctica cells and a compensatory base change in the D1–D1′ helix shared by these species; high percent of dissimilarity (11.6±1.3) between their 16S–23S internal transcribed spacer sequences with at least 5 autapomorphic mutations in the D1–D1′ and Box-B helices, and distinct folding patterns of the Box-B helix allowed us to erect a new species.

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