Apotrachelocerca orientalis, Ma & Xu & Yan & Li & Warren & Song, 2021

Ma, Mingzhen, Xu, Yuan, Yan, Ying, Li, Yuqing, Warren, Alan & Song, Weibo, 2021, Taxonomy and molecular phylogeny of four karyorelictid species belonging to the genera Apotrachelocerca and Tracheloraphis (Protozoa: Ciliophora), with descriptions of two new species, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 192 : -

COMMENTS ON APOTRACHELOCERCA ORIENTALIS SP. NOV.

Hitherto, the genus Apotrachelocerca was monotypic, the only known species being A. arenicola (Kahl, 1933) Xu et al., 2011 . Apotrachelocerca arenicola resembles the new species A. orientalis sp. nov. in terms of the body shape and size, nuclear structure and general morphology. Nevertheless, it can be separated from the latter by the presence of densely distributed, tiny cortical granules (absent in A. orientalis sp. nov.) ( Xu et al., 2011b). In addition, their SSU rDNA sequences differ by 15 bp, indicating that these two organisms should not be conspecific ( Fig. 2; Table 4).