Molecular Phylogeny of Paraphelidium letcheri sp. nov. (Aphelida, Opisthosporidia)

Abstract

Aphelids remain poorly known parasitoids of algae and have recently raised considerable interest due to their phylogenetic position at the base of Holomycota. Together with Cryptomycota (Rozellosporidia) and Microsporidia, they have been recently re-classified as the Opisthosporidia, which constitutes the sister group to the fungi within the Holomycota. Molecular environmental studies have revealed a huge diversity of aphelids, but only four genera have been described: Aphelidium, Amoeboaphelidium, Paraphelidium, and Pseudaphelidium. Here, we describe the life cycle of a new representative of Aphelida, Paraphelidium letcheri sp. nov., and provide the 18S rRNA gene sequence for this species. Molecular phylogenetic analysis indicates that P. letcheri is sister to Paraphelidium tribonemae and together they form a monophyletic cluster which is distantly related to both, Aphelidium, with flagellated zoospores, and Amoebaphelidium, with amoeboid zoospores

High-level classification of the Fungi and a tool for evolutionary ecological analyses

“…BCG1, with strong support. This pattern supports previous rRNA gene-based studies ), but conflicts with some other analyses utilizing rRNA (Karpov et al 2017b;Letcher et al 2017) or proteinencoding (Torruella et al 2017) genes. These studies that may suffer from lower taxon sampling, place aphelids close to Rozellomycota.…”

“…Chitin is present in cell wall of all fungal groups including some life stages of Microsporidea, but it has been apparently secondarily lost in many if not all members of Rozellomycota due to their endoparasitic lifestyle (Jones et al 2011b;Corsaro et al 2014). Unfortunately, much less is known about the structure and genome of Aphelidiomycota, but existing evidence points to their great similarity to Rozellomycota (Karpov et al 2014b(Karpov et al , 2017b. Most importantly, much of the scientific community has accepted Rozellomycota as part of fungi (evident in continuously evolving classification systems of International Nucleotide Sequence Databases consortium, UNITE, MycoBank).…”

Molecular Phylogeny and Ultrastructure of Aphelidium desmodesmi, a New Species in Aphelida (Opisthosporidia)

“…nov. [Karpov et al. ]) and phylum Microsporidia Balbiani, comprise the recently erected superphylum Opisthosporidia Karpov et al. (), a pivotal lineage sister to the fungi.…”

“…Within Aphelida are four genera as well as a number of environmental sequences (Karpov et al. , , ,c). The genera Aphelidium (Zopf ) emend Gromov (with six species, including the one described herein), Amoeboaphelidium (Scherffel ) emend Gromov ; emend Karpov 2014 (with five species), and Paraphelidium Karpov, Moriera & López‐García 2016 (with two species) occur in freshwater habitats, while the monotypic Pseudaphelidium Schweikert and Schnepf (, ) occurs in marine environments.…”

“…occidentale Letcher), and multiple strains of Paraphelidium tribonemae Karpov, Moriera & López‐García have been examined morphologically, ultrastructurally, and sequenced, such that inclusively their thallus morphologies, fine structures, and molecular phylogenetic placements are known (Karpov et al. , , ,c; Letcher et al. , ).…”