Revision of aloricate Oligotrichea (Ciliophora, Spirotricha), a group of ecologically important ciliates

All available data and illustrations on aloricate Oligotrichea will be compiled. The morphology and ontogenesis of new or poorly-known Oligotrichea contained in available material from European coastal waters will be described. Selected limnetic and marine aloricate Oligotrichea will be isolated and cultivated for ultrastructural investigations.The genealogy of the Choreotrichida will be reconstructed by traditional methods (Hennig’s argumentation scheme and computer programs) using morphologic, ontogenetic, and ultrastructural data from the literature and own investigations. For genealogical analyses, also the small subunit rRNA gene of further aloricate Oligotrichea will be sequenced. The objectives of the proposed project can be summarized as follows: (i) developing a monograph on the aloricate Oligotrichea, including a general section considering the main morphology, biology, terminology, methodology, phylogeny, and classification; and a systematic section with the descriptions and all available illustrations of the taxa, including autecological data, accession numbers for the type slides and nucleotide sequences, references to web pages, and keys to the species based on live and protargol-impregnated specimens and on preserved material; (ii) adding the results from further investigations on Oligotrichea to the planned monograph, i.e., the descriptions of new and poorly-known species, ultrastructural data from scanning and transmission electron microscopical studies, and the reconstruction of the phylogeny based on morphologic, ontogenetic, ultrastructural, and gene sequence data.