CHARACTERIZATION OF THE PARMALES: MUCH MORE THAN THE RESOLUTION OF A TAXONOMIC ENIGMA

摘要

On the eve of the “sixth mass extinction” in Earth’s history, phycologists face challenging questions on the role and the fate of algae, one of the most important groups of primary producers on the planet. This task is far from trivial, particularly given that it is likely that a majority of algal species are still unknown to science. Many of these may even be susceptible to disappearance before their formal description. Recent efforts from environmental sequencing and cultivation approaches have revealed the existence and ecological roles of several novel algal lineages distributed across the eukaryotic tree of life (Not et al. 2007, Moore et al. 2008, Lepère et al. 2009, Liu et al. 2009, Shi et al. 2009). The study published by Ichinomiya et al. in this issue is a convincing example of how the inventory of algal diversity could be fundamental for our understanding of the evolution of life.