Pseudochlorella J. W. G. Lund.

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

Pseudochlorella J. W. G. Lund.

Pseudochlorella , originally described as Chlorellopsis by Zeitler (1954), is characterized by a coccoid type of thallus with ellipsoid to globular cells surrounded by a thin and smooth cell wall ( Fig. 11 ). The cells may form groups and can be enclosed in mucilage. They contain a grooved or plate-like chloroplast with a spherical pyrenoid (Ettl & Gärtner 2013).

Pseudochlorella is very difficult to distinguish from Elliptochloris since they share many morphological features, including the formation of S-type and E-type autospores. However, the two genera belong to distantly related clades, the Prasiolales and the Elliptochloris -clade ( Darienko et al. 2016). Some Pseudochlorella species are found in extreme environments. For example, a strain closely related to P. pringsheimii has been isolated from an extremely acidic environment of a mine in Japan ( Hirooka et al. 2014). There are three accepted species names within the genus ( Guiry & Guiry 2022). Two of them (the type species P. pyrenoidosa and P. signiensis ) were isolated from Lecidea and Trapelia lichens, respectively ( Zeitler 1954; Darienko et al. 2016).

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).