Characterization of the Species of the Tetrahymena pyriformis Complex

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Abstract
The ability to distinguish different species among members of this complex, combined with increasing evidence of their ancient divergence and large molecular distances, requires that they be assigned Latin binomilals. The breeding strains may be assigned species designations corresponding, insofar as present evidence permits, to natural populations sharing common gene pools. On this basis the new species recognized are T. americanis, T. australis, T. borealis, T. canadensis, T. capricornis, T. cosmopolitanis, T. hyperangularis, T. pigmentosa, T. thermophila and T. tropicalis. For amicronucleate strains species designations for sets of strains must agree in at least 67% of their electrophoretic mobilities, making the amicronucleate species taxa approximately equivalent to the genetic species in terms of molecular diversification. The species designation T. pyriformis (Ehrenberg) is reserved for the amicronucleate kindred descended primarily from Lwoff''s original laboratory strain GL. Three additional amicronucleate species proposed as new are T. elliotti, T. furgasoni and T. lwoffi.