Schmidleinema santiniketanense, Keshari & Das & Adhikary, 2016

Keshari, Nitin, Das, Sudipta Kumar & Adhikary, Siba Prasad, 2016, Schmidleinema santiniketanense sp. nov. (Cyanobacteria / Cyanoprokaryota) from a building facade in Santiniketan, India, Phytotaxa 283 (2), pp. 181-187 : 182-184

Schmidleinema santiniketanense sp. nov. ( Figure 1–14 )

Thallus small, brownish green, cushion like, powdery, surface hydrophobic ( Figs. 1–3 ). Filaments greenish turning brownish with age, crescent shaped ( Figs. 4–5 ), with prostrate middle portion attached to the substratum and upwardly bent apical portions slightly narrowing to form blunt apices ( Fig. 6 ), in middle part 4.1–7.2 μm wide, in erect apical part 3–4.5 μm wide. Sheath indistinct in younger filaments; in mature filaments it appeared transparent in apical portions, turning slightly yellowish towards older part ( Fig. 9 ). Branching profuse, both true and false ( Figs. 7–8, 11 ); true branches long, 3–4 times of the main filament, restricted to the basal or middle portion, false branches rather small, confined to apical parts. Trichomes cylindrical, with constricted cross walls in the older basal part and unconstructed to slightly constricted cross walls in the erect apical part. Cells barrel shaped towards the apices and spherical to oval in the basal portion, 2.5–4.8 μm long and (3.5) 5.5–6.5 μm broad. Heterocytes both intercalary and basal; intercalary ones barrel shaped to quadrate and the basal ones hemispherical. Hormocytes consisting of 3–6 cells formed in the erect apical portion of the filament, with non-lamellated, transparent sheath ( Figs. 12–14 ).

Type:— INDIA, WEST BENGAL. Santiniketan: Siksha Bhavana , on lime-washed concrete building façade, sample VB 1.2, 52 m a.s.l., 23°40’52.8”N and 087°40’21.3”E , N. Keshari, 5 October 2011 (Holotype CAL!, Alg.052; reference cultures of the species were deposited and maintained at the algal culture collection at Department of Biotechnology , Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan with reference strain number VB 521293)

Etymology:— The specific epithet is based on the name of the Type locality.

Ecology:— On lime-washed concrete building facade in a shady place in Santiniketan, West Bengal, India, occurred as blackish green biofilm along with other coccal cyanobacterial population of Aphanocapsa Nägeli (1849: 52) and Asterocapsa H.J. Chu (1952: 97) .

Figures

FIGURE 1–14. Light Microscopic photographs of Schmidleinema santiniketanense sp. nov. showing its mode of occurrence on a building facades (Fig. 1–2), growth pattern in agar plate (Fig. 3), filament structure with pseudo branching (Fig. 4–6), profuse true branching and their origin (Fig. 7–11), division of a cell (Fig. 12), pseudo-hormogonia with heterocyst (Fig. 13) and without heterocyst (Fig. 14). Scale bar. Fig. 4 = 20 μm and Fig. 5–14 = 10 μm.