Acetabularia jalakanyakae, Saini & Madhu & Kohli & Gupta & Bast, 2021

Saini, K C, Madhu, A, Kohli, R K, Gupta, K & Bast, F, 2021, Morpho-molecular assessment of Acetabularia jalakanyakae Sp. Nov. (Dasycladales, Chlorophyta) - a new species from Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India, Indian Journal of Geo Marine Sciences 50 (9), pp. 701-708 : 706-707

Acetabularia jalakanyakae Sp. Nov.

( Fig. 1 )

Description

The main body is comprised into three regions: a basal part with a rhizoidal holdfast, a middle region with a long stalk, and the topmost upper part with an umbrella-shaped circular cap. It consists of an unbranched cylindrical stalk. Stalk length is 20 – 40 mm with a cap diameter of 5 – 13 mm. The cap is completely fused, having 40 – 60 cap rays. The outer end of each ray forms a pointed structure. The outer ring (Corona inferior) consists of slender lobes with bifurcation. The inner ring (Corona superior) has 40 – 60 lobes without bifurcations. The inner ring comprised of 6 or 7 hairs per lobe and shows protrusions inside. The developing cap shows a swollen lobe inside and early partition at inner and outer rings.

Holotype

Collected from intertidal rocks at Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. Herbarium voucher is deposited at Agharkar Research Institute, Pune, India, (Index Herbarium code: AHMA), under voucher no. AHMA - 32437 . The DNA sequence of 18S rDNA partial region of the isolate generated and deposited at GenBank under accession # MT371394 .

Isotype

Isotype deposited at the Central University of Punjab, Bathinda (Index Herbarium code: CUPB), under voucher no. CUPB-ACT-2019-1 .

Etymology

Specific epithet which is feminine noun in genitive means ‗mermaid‘ in Sanskrit to refer the aesthesis of the cap that resembles mermaid‘s umbrella.

Limitations

The study analysed only a few algal samples from one site in Andaman Islands. More efforts to study the species biogeography would have added value to this report. The study did not analyse the life cycle patterns as the investigation did not involve any algal culturing. As life cycle and ontogeny are highly informative, this would have significantly improved the manuscript. Additionally, the length of generated sequence is only 234 bp and all four mismatches with the closest hit (A. dentata) were all ambiguities (N or R). However, strength of morphological synapomorphies stands valid for the description of new species.

Figures

Fig. 1 — Acetabularia jalakanyakae Sp. Nov. collected from Andaman and Nicobar Islands. (A) Whole sample; and (B) Lower surface of the cap. Scale represents 1 mm distance between two bars