Three-gene based phylogeny of the Urostyloidea (Protista, Ciliophora, Hypotricha), with notes on classification of some core taxa

Redescription of two little-known urostyloid ciliates, Anteholosticha randani (Grolière, 1975) Berger, 2003 and A. antecirrata Berger, 2006 (Ciliophora, Urostylida)

“…Therefore we here present only the ML tree with bootstraps and posterior probabilities. As shown in previous studies (Huang et al 2014;Lv et al 2015;Zhao et al 2015), the urostyloids are non-monophyletic whereas a "Core Urostylids" group is strongly supported (94% ML, 1.00 BI) and composed of two major sub-clades. Within the first sub-clade (46% ML, 0.97 BI), Anteholosticha antecirrata clusters with Urostyla grandis and Bakuella granulifera with maximum support (100% ML, 1.00 BI), and then forms a well-supported sister relationship to a large group containing Bakuella, Apobakuella, Neobakuella, Diaxonella and three congeners of Anteholosticha (i.e.…”

“…Berger (2003Berger ( , 2006 noted that Anteholosticha is non-monophyletic and this was subsequently supported by molecular data (Fan et al 2014b;Lv et al 2015;Zhao et al 2015). Based upon a phylogenetic analysis of three genes, Huang et al (2014) transferred three species of Anteholosticha, namely A. scutellum, A. petzi and A. warreni, each with its transverse cirri arranged in a roughly U-shaped pseudorow, to the newly established genus Arcuseries.…”

Morphology and SSU rDNA sequence analysis of two hypotrichous ciliates (Protozoa, Ciliophora, Hypotrichia) including the new species Metaurostylopsis parastruederkypkeae n. sp.

“…was very similar to M. struederkypkeae, especially in body shape and reddish cell color, two types of cortical granules, and most aspects of its infraciliature, but differed from the latter in following features (data for M. struederkypkeae given by Shao et al, 2008b) in (1) midventral pairs (7-13 vs. 4-7), left and right marginal rows respectively (5-7 vs. 4-5; 3-5 vs. constantly three); and (5) the arrangement of undulating membranes (the paroral membrane intersects with the endoral membrane in their posterior section vs. the paroral and endoral membranes are parallel). The SSU rDNA sequence of the newly isolated organism differed from that of M. struederkypkeae (EU220228, JQ424841, isolated by Shao et al, 2008b andHuang et al, 2014) by 4 to 6 nucleotides. Thus, based on the morphological and molecular differences, we suggested that this new isolate represented a new Metaurostylopsis species (Figs.5C1-C3; Table 2; Shao et al, 2008b).…”

Phylogenetic framework of the systematically confused Anteholosticha–Holosticha complex (Ciliophora, Hypotrichia) based on multigene analysis

“…The morphological hypothesis that Anteholosticha is not a monophyletic genus has been constantly supported by small subunit ribosomal RNA (SSU-rRNA) gene phylogenies (e.g., Chen et al, 2010;Park et al, 2013;Shao et al, 2011;Xu et al, 2011). As a first separation of the speciose genus Anteholosticha, three species (A. scutellum, A. petzi, A. warreni) with a roughly U-shaped pattern of transverse cirri, were transferred to a new genus Arcuseries by Huang et al (2014). However, there are still six phylogenetically distinct branches with Anteholosticha species in SSU-rDNA trees (Fan et al, 2014a,b;Park et al, 2012Park et al, , 2013, indicating that further splitting is needed.…”