Kyliniella latvica Skuja

Ganesan, E. K., West, John A. & Jr, Orlando Necchi, 2018, A catalogue and bibliography of non-marine (freshwater and estuarine) Rhodophyta (red algae) of India, Phytotaxa 364 (1), pp. 1-48 : 8

Kyliniella latvica Skuja

Kant & Gupta 1998. p. 185, Pl. 84, fig. 1. (misspelled K. “lativica”); Ott, 2009, pp. 323 & 633.

Distribution in India: Himalayas (north-east side, Leh Town, Ladakh district, east Kashmr, on the Tibetan frontier).

Notes: Kyliniella is monotypic, exclusively freshwater ( Kylin 1956) with wide distribution, reported sporadically from Europe ( Eloranta & Kwandrans 2007; García-Fernández et al. 2012) and North America ( Sheath & Vis 2015). Typical plants of K. latvica possess a pseudoparenchymatous discoid base with upright unbranched filaments, each cell with several parietal discoid blue-green plastids without pyrenoids (see Sheath 2003; Eloranta & Kwandrans 2007, p. 27, fig. 8a, b, c). On the contrary, the Indian plants are described as having a heterotrichous basal layer giving rise to erect filaments, each cell having a single chloroplast (see Kant & Gupta 1998, Pl. 84, fig. 1), similar to some species of Audouinella . Ott (2009, p. 626) pointed out that Krishnamurthy’s (1953) generalized remark that Kyliniella may be a juvenile stage of Compsopogon and/or Kneuckeria Schmidle is untenable, an opinion with which we concur, because it was made without any supporting evidence. The monotypic Kneuckeria pulchra Schmidle is reported so far only from the Sinai Peninsula. A notable, but unverified feature of Kyliniella latvica , is the putative presence of sexual reproduction ( Flint 1953; Vis & Sheath 1993; Sheath 2003). Yoon et al. (2006), based on limited molecular data, referred K. latvica to the lineage 2 of the Porphyridiales , of the seven major lineages of red algae. Kyliniella latvica appears to be very close to Bangiopsis subsimplex (Montagne) Schmitz and Purpureofilum apyrenoidigerum J.A.West, Zuccarello & J.L.Scott as inferred from their phylogenetic analyses. The report of K. latvica in India ( Kant & Gupta 1998) remains to be confirmed.