Abstract
Prostomatean ciliates play important roles in the flow of material and energy in aquatic microbial food webs, and thus have attracted wide attention for over a century. Their taxonomy and systematics are, however, still poorly understood because of their relatively few taxonomically informative morphological characters. In this study, two new prostomateans,
Lagynus binucleatus
sp. n. and
Foissnerophrys alveolata
gen. n., sp. n., collected from a freshwater pool and the intertidal zone of a sandy beach, respectively, in Qingdao, China, are investigated using living observation, protargol staining, and SSU rRNA gene sequencing methods. The genus
Lagynus
is redefined, and the new species
L. binucleatus
sp. n. is established based on significant morphological differences with similar forms. Furthermore, a new genus,
Foissnerophrys
gen. n., is established based on a combination of morphological and molecular data with
F. alveaolata
sp. n. the type species by monotypy. The identities of intracellular prokaryotes of these two new species are discussed based on fluorescence
in situ
hybridization (FISH) data and newly obtained 16S rRNA gene sequences.