A New Species of Actinotaenium (Desmidiaceae, Desmidiales) from Eastern Himalayas, India, with a Note on Its Reproductio
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A New Species of Actinotaenium (Desmidiaceae, Desmidiales) from Eastern Himalayas, India, with a Note on Its Reproduction Deepak Chettri1 • Debjyoti Das2 • Sudipta Kumar Das3
Received: 18 October 2017 / Revised: 18 January 2020 / Accepted: 21 January 2020 The National Academy of Sciences, India 2020
Abstract A new species, i.e. Actinotaenium himalayanum, is described from a moist cemented wall from eastern Himalayas, India. The taxon is not only having morphological peculiarities, but also showed interesting features during its process of asexual reproduction. Keywords Desmid Actinotaenium himalayanum Sikkim Eastern Himalaya
Introduction The Eastern Himalayas include the north-eastern states and northern part of West Bengal along with central Nepal, Myanmar, Bhutan and south-east Tibet in China. It houses world’s richest alpine flora, out of which one third are endemic to the region [1], thus was considered as ‘Cradle of flowering plants’ by Thakhtajan [2]. The ecology of this region is much diverse, providing subtropical forest zones in lower altitudes to sub-alpine to alpine extreme habitats at higher altitudes. The complex topography and a wide altitudinal variation from 300 to 8000 m.a.s.l. create a favourable microclimatic ambience for a unique biodiversity. Amidst the Eastern Himalayas, Sikkim is a small yet biodiversity rich state. The aquatic desmid flora of the state & Sudipta Kumar Das [email protected] 1
Department of Botany, School of Life Science, Sikkim University, 5th Mile, Tadong, Gangtok, Sikkim 737102, India
2
Department of Botany, Bankura Sammilani College, Bankura, West Bengal 722102, India
3
Central National Herbarium, Botanical Survey of India, Howrah, West Bengal 711103, India
was studied time to time [3–14]. Actinotaenium (Na¨geli) Teiling is a placoderm desmid characterized by smooth wall and inconspicuous median incision or sinus. A total of 96 taxa (both species and infra-specific taxa) so far described from the world (Guiry 2020), out of which 17 taxa were recorded from India. Only 9 taxa of Actinotaenium were recorded so far from Sikkim, including one endemic species Actinotaenium sikkimikum Keshri and Das [15]. Most of them were collected from the littorals or attached to hydrophytes in the high altitude lakes. The present taxon has phenological uniqueness which not only differ it from all the local records but also from existing Actinotaenium species, thus is described as a novel taxon, i.e. Actinotaenium himalayanum sp. nov. The algae were collected as a greenish gelatinous biofilm from a concrete wall receiving seepage of water (Fig. 1a) from over lying soil of an agricultural land located along the village road of Nandok, Sikkim. Since the morphological features needed for identification were not adequate enough in the natural material, a small amount of the sample was also cultured in Bold’s Basal Medium [16]. Light microscopic observations and morphological characterization were made with Nikon microscope Ni–11 fitted with Nikon Digital
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