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From oral structure to molecular evidence: new insights into the evolutionary phylogeny of the ciliate order Sessilida (Protista, Ciliophora), with the establishment of two new families and new contributions to the poorly studied family Vaginicolidae

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Abstract

Ciliated protists represent one of the most primitive and diverse lineages of eukaryotes, with nuclear dimorphism, a distinctive sexual process (conjugation), and extensive genome rearrangements. Among divergent ciliate lineages, the peritrich order Sessilida includes members with a colonial lifestyle, which may hint to an independent evolutionary attempt for multicellularity, although they are still single-celled organisms. To date, the evolution and phylogeny of this group are still far from clear, in part due to the paucity of molecular and/or morphological data for many taxa. In this study, we extend taxon sampling of a loricate group of sessilids by obtaining 69 new rDNA (SSU rDNA, ITS1-5.8S rDNA-ITS2, and LSU rDNA) sequences from 20 well-characterized representative species and analyze the phylogenetic relationships within Sessilida. The main findings are: (i) the genera Rhabdostyla and Campanella each represents a unique taxon at family level, supporting the establishment of two new families, i.e., Rhabdostylidae n. fam. and Campanellidae n. fam., respectively, the former being sister to a morphologically heterogeneous clade comprising Astylozoidae and several incertae sedis species and the latter occupying the basal position within the Sessilida clade; (ii) the structure of infundibular polykinety 3 is likely to be a phylogenetically informative character for resolving evolutionary relationships among sessilids; (iii) differences between sparsely and the densely arranged silverline systems could be a suprageneric taxonomic character; (iv) the monophyly of Vaginicolidae is confirmed, which is consistent with its specialized morphology, i.e., the possession of a typical peritrich lorica which might be an apomorphy for this group; (v) within Vaginicolidae, the monotypic Cothurniopsis sensu Stokes, 1893 is a synonym of Cothurnia Ehrenberg, 1831, and a new combination is created, i.e., Cothurnia valvata nov. comb.; (vi) Vaginicola sensu lato comprises at least two distinctly divergent clades, one affiliated with Thuricola and the other with a systematically puzzling clade represented by Vaginicola tincta.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Laoshan Laboratory (LSKJ202203201), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32030015, 41976086, 32270558, 32111530116), Young Taishan Scholar Program of Shandong Province (tsqn202103037), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (202141007) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M703037).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Evolution & Marine Biodiversity, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266003, China

    Borong Lu, Xiaozhong Hu, Weibo Song & Ying Yan

  2. College of Fisheries, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266003, China

    Xiaozhong Hu

  3. Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, SW7 5BD, UK

    Alan Warren

  4. Laoshan Laboratory, Qingdao, 266237, China

    Weibo Song

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  1. Borong Lu
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  2. Xiaozhong Hu
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  3. Alan Warren
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  5. Ying Yan
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Correspondence to Ying Yan.

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Lu, B., Hu, X., Warren, A. et al. From oral structure to molecular evidence: new insights into the evolutionary phylogeny of the ciliate order Sessilida (Protista, Ciliophora), with the establishment of two new families and new contributions to the poorly studied family Vaginicolidae. Sci. China Life Sci. 66, 1535–1553 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-022-2268-2

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