Diplosphaera Bialosuknia

Veselá, Veronika, Malavasi, Veronica & Škaloud, Pavel, 2024, A synopsis of green-algal lichen symbionts with an emphasis on their free-living lifestyle, Phycologia 63 (3), pp. 317-338 : 325

Diplosphaera Bialosuknia .

To date D. chodatii is the only taxonomically accepted species of this genus ( Guiry & Guiry 2022). Its globose to ellipsoid cells occur singly or form two- or four-celled packages ( Fig. 9 ) and may be surrounded by mucilage. The chloroplast is cup-shaped, parietal, with regularly arranged thylakoid membranes. Pyrenoids are usually absent. The morphologically similar species Nannochloris normandinae , once taught to be a photobiont of Normandina pulchella ( Tschermak-Woess 1988) , has recently been synonymized with D. chodatii ( Pröschold & Darienko 2020) . The genus Diplosphaera is very difficult to distinguish from Stichococcus based on morphological characters (they differ only in forming two-celled clusters) and the exact delimitation of these two and other related genera was only published quite recently ( Pröschold & Darienko 2020). Representatives of this genus are the most common photobionts of lichens in the family Verrucariaceae ( Thüs et al. 2011) .

Figures

Figs 1–18. Lichen photobiont genera (including nonlichenized species) belonging to classes Trebouxiophyceae and Chlorophyceae. Fig. 1. Asterochloris lobophora. Fig. 10. Prasiola crispa. Fig. 2. Myrmecia incisa. Fig. 11. Pseudochlorella pringsheimii. Fig. 3. Trebouxia impressa. Fig. 12. Stichococcus sp. Fig. 4. Vulcanochloris symbiontica. Fig. 13. Auxenochlorella protothecoides. Fig. 5. Chloroidium saccharophilum. Fig. 14. Apatococcus sp. Fig. 6. Jaagichlorella luteoviridis. Fig. 15. Leptosira sp. Fig. 7. Coccomyxa sp. Fig. 16. Symbiochloris tschermakiae. Fig. 8. Elliptochloris subsphaerica. Fig. 17. Uvulifera verrucariae (Lorenz 2016). Fig. 9. Diplosphaera chodatii. Fig. 18. Bracteacoccus. sp. Scale bars: 10 μm (Figs 1-9, 11-18), 200 μm (Fig. 10).