IMA Fungus 4(2): 169-175, doi: 10.5598/imafungus.2013.04.02.02
Incipient loss of flagella in the genus Geolegnia: the emergence of a new clade within Leptolegnia?
expand article infoMónica M. Steciow‡, Enrique Lara§, Amandine Pillonel§, Sebastián A. Pelizza‡, Eduardo A. Lestani|, Gustavo C. Rossi, Lassaad Belbahri§
‡ Instituto de Botánica Spegazzini, La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina§ University of Neuchâtel, Laboratory of Soil Biology, Department of Biology, Neuchâtel, Switzerland| Civil Centra de Investigaciones del Bosque Atlántico, Centro de Investigaciones Ecológicas Subtropicales, Parque Nacional Iguazú /Asoc., Pto. Iguazú, Misiones, Argentina¶ CEPAVE-CCT -CONICET, La Plata, Argentina
© Mónica Steciow, Enrique Lara, Amandine Pillonel, Sebastián Pelizza, Eduardo Lestani, Gustavo Rossi, Lassaad Belbahri.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes, provided that the article is not altered or modified and the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Steciow MM, Lara E, Pillonel A, Pelizza SA, Lestani EA, Rossi GC, Belbahri L (2013) Incipient loss of flagella in the genus Geolegnia: the emergence of a new clade within Leptolegnia? IMA Fungus 4(2): 169-175. https://doi.org/10.5598/imafungus.2013.04.02.02
Open Access
Abstract
The genus Geolegnia represents a poorly documented group of saprolegnialean oomycetes isolated from soils as free-living organisms. Although it is morphologically similar to the facultative parasitic genus Leptolegnia, Geolegnia presents the uncommon property of having lost a flagellate stage in its lifecycle. Based on ITS and large subunit (LSU) rRNA sequence data, we show Geolegnia to be basal to Leptolegnia, and also introduce Geolegnia helicoides sp. nov. Using sequence data of Leptolegnia available in GenBank, supplemented by data derived from culture collections, we show that Geolegnia is nested within Leptolegnia, a genus characterised by its “conventional” biflagellate life cycle. The emergence of Geolegnia is therefore seen as a recent event, and we suggest here an evolutionary context where this loss might have been advantageous. Based on this study, Leptolegnia remains paraphyletic, awaiting the redefinition of genera in this complex.
Keywords
Oomycetes, Fast evolution, Phylogeny, Saprolegniales, Internal transcribed spacer (ITS), Large subunit (LSU) rRNA