Euplotes woodruffi Gaw, 1939

Lee, Sue Yeon, Yoo, Jung Sun & Kim, Seung Tae, 2017, New records of terrestrial and freshwater ciliates (Protozoa: Ciliophora) from Korea: Brief descriptions with notes, Journal of Species Research 6, pp. 1-7 : 3-4

6. Euplotes woodruffi Gaw, 1939 ( Fig. 1F)

Diagnosis. Body size approximate 100 × 60 μm in protargol preparations; body ellipsoidal, flattened dorsoventrally, both body ends rounded; rigid. T-shaped macronucleus with 1 micronucleus. Cytoplasm colourless. Movement, without any peculiarities, crawling on surface. 9 frontoventral and 5 transverse cirri; 2 marginal and 2 caudal cirri arranged in a row along posterior body margin.

Remarks. Euplotes woodruffi has similar morphological attributes to its congener E. parawoodruffi . However, Dai et al. (2013) suggested E. parawoodruffi as a junior synonym of E. woodruffi . Kwon et al. (2007) reported a Korean population of E. parawoodruffi . Interestingly, the SSU rRNA gene similarity matrix of Dai et al. (2013) showed relatively higher intraspecific variation (max. 0.8%) than congeneric interspecific variation, which suggested the presence of sibling species within the E. woodruffi - E. parawoodruffi group. Park et al. (2010) reported interspecific variation of less than 1.0% in Euplotes , so we refrained from synonymizing the two species in this report.

Voucher slides. Two slides, including protargol-impregnated specimens (GS), were deposited at the National Institute of Biological Resources in Korea (NIBR PR0000107191, NIBRPR0000107192).