Pliocaenicus bolshetokoensis – a new species from Lake Bolshoe Toko (Yakutia, Eastern Siberia, Russia)

Abstract

A new species from the diatom genus Pliocaenicus Round & Håkansson is described from Yakutia (Eastern Siberia, Russia) as Pliocaenicus bolshetokoensis sp. nov., on the basis of light and scanning electron microscopy. The new species is morphologically similar to other members of the genus but differs from the closely related species, Pliocaenicus costatus (Loginova, Lupikina & Khursevich) Flower, Ozornina & Kuzmina and Pliocaenicus seczkinae Stachura-Suchoples, Genkal & Khursevich, mainly by the position of the central fultoportulae and the valve face relief. Variability of quantitative features such as valve diameter, number of striae and areolae in 10 µm, and number of central fultoportulae are similar to data known from other centric genera. The most variable quantitative character of P. bolshetokoensis sp. nov. is valve diameter; the numbers of areolae and striae in 10 µm were less variable.

Keywords:

• diatoms
• Pliocaenicus
• new species, taxonomy
• Lake Bolshoe Toko, Russia

Acknowledgements

MK was partly supported by the Russian Government Program of Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University (LM). Sampling was carried out with help of the state topic AAAA-A17-117020110056-0. We wish to thank Eileen Cox for English correction.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This publication is based on research carried out with financial support from the Russian Science Foundation (14-14-00555) for SEM, preparing plates, and finishing the manuscript.