title: Ciliate communities and hidden biodiversity in freshwater biotopes of the Pistoia province (Tuscany, Italy).
abstract: Ciliates are essential components of aquatic environments, playing a pivotal role in microbial loops. Thus, the composition and dynamics of ciliate communities have been subjected to intense studying. Morphological methods have been traditionally employed, until the development of next-generation sequencing recently allowed to explore the topic with exclusively molecular techniques. However, the results of the two approaches are hardly comparable, and the pictures they offer can be quite different. This may be due, among other reasons, to two factors: (1) morphological descriptions may miss a large portion of "hidden biodiversity" (including rare species and resistance forms) that is detected instead by molecular methods; (2) identification errors may arise due to difficulties in recognizing microbial taxa without in-depth analyses. In this survey of freshwater systems of the Pistoia province (Tuscany, Italy) we address both issues, trying to quantify the hidden diversity through prolonged observations of differentially treated sample aliquots, combining morphological identification with Sanger sequencing. We provide the first insights into the ciliate fauna of this area presenting results that are suitable for future comparisons thanks to their multidisciplinary origin, and supply the first molecular data on well-known taxa such as Linostomella and Disematostoma.
authors.affiliation: Università di Pisa, Dipartimento di Biologia, Unità di Zoologia-Antropologia, Via A. Volta 4/6, Pisa 56126 Italy.
authors.forename: Alessia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rossi
authors.affiliation: Università di Pisa, Dipartimento di Biologia, Unità di Zoologia-Antropologia, Via A. Volta 4/6, Pisa 56126 Italy. Electronic address: vittorio.boscaro@botany.ubc.ca.
authors.forename: Vittorio
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Boscaro
authors.affiliation: Università di Pisa, Dipartimento di Biologia, Unità di Zoologia-Antropologia, Via A. Volta 4/6, Pisa 56126 Italy.
authors.forename: Daniela
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Carducci
authors.affiliation: Università di Pisa, Dipartimento di Biologia, Unità di Zoologia-Antropologia, Via A. Volta 4/6, Pisa 56126 Italy.
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Serra
authors.affiliation: Università di Pisa, Dipartimento di Biologia, Unità di Zoologia-Antropologia, Via A. Volta 4/6, Pisa 56126 Italy.
authors.forename: Letizia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Modeo
authors.affiliation: Università di Pisa, Dipartimento di Biologia, Unità di Zoologia-Antropologia, Via A. Volta 4/6, Pisa 56126 Italy.
authors.forename: Franco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Verni
authors.affiliation: Università di Pisa, Dipartimento di Biologia, Unità di Zoologia-Antropologia, Via A. Volta 4/6, Pisa 56126 Italy; St.-Petersburg State University, Department of Invertebrate Zoology, Universitetskaya emb. 7/9, St. Petersburg 199034, Russia.
authors.forename: Sergei I
authors.initials: SI
authors.lastname: Fokin
authors.affiliation: Università di Pisa, Dipartimento di Biologia, Unità di Zoologia-Antropologia, Via A. Volta 4/6, Pisa 56126 Italy.
authors.forename: Giulio
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Petroni
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D016798:Ciliophora / Q000145:classification* / Q000166:cytology / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D017753:Ecosystem; D005618:Fresh Water; D019015:Geologic Sediments / Q000469:parasitology; D007558:Italy; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D012337:RNA, Ribosomal, 18S / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D012337:RNA, Ribosomal, 18S
keywords: 18S rRNA gene; Ciliate ecology; Late-blooming taxa; Morphology; NMDS; Sanger sequencing