I saw these brown beans hanging on a Tabellaria today:
and was wondering, what was this again..? Being sure I had seen a picture like this somewhere I tried to recall in which book. Was it in the Yellow-green algae (Xanthophyceae) book? Or was it in the Green algae book (Chlorophyceae, Chlorococcales) from Komárek the Great and Fott the Fine? Or perhaps in the Dinophyceae book??
There is something that makes one think about the Xanthophyceae: the thick, transparent walls and even some red oil dops. But the color is very dark… and it looked like they did not put much too much lugol in the sample when they took it. The dark color is not very Xanthophyceae- or Chlorophyceae -like. But it is characteristic to Dinophyceae.
And yes, there it was! In the Family Dinococcaceae Fott 1960, together with four other genera were the pictures of species in the genus Dinococcus, that I had in mind. This was in the Süsswasseflora von Mitteleuropa 6, that was written by Jiří Popovský and Lois Ann Pfiester (notice all the stripes and carons I managed to get in it this time!) back in 1990, an ocean of time if one looks at the development in the field of algae taxonomy.
Checked some sites for the taxonomy of this genus. algaeBASE puts Dinococcus in the Class Dinophyceae, the Order Phytodiniales and further in the Family Phytodiniaceae. The Dutch TWN-list gives only Dinophyceae incertae sedis. Even worse result was found on ITIS, (Integrated Taxonomic Information System) where the whole genus is missing. Does it has a synonyme in ITIS? Or why is it not there?
Back to the Green and Yellow-green algae. There are some species, that very much look like these brown beans of today. Like in the green algae genus Bicuspidella Pascher 1932 or in the genus Dioxys Pascher in the Yellow-green algae. Information from the books that are more tha 20 years old… yes, I know… I must go and read some more recent literature.
Literature
Ettl, Hanuš 1978. Xanthophyceae 1. Teil. In.: Ettl H., Gerloff J., Heynigh H. (ed.). Süsswasserflora von Mitteleuropa Band 3. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart, New York. 530 s.
Komárek J., Fott B.1983 Chlorophyceae (Grünalgen), Ordnung Chlorococcales. In: Huber-Pestalozzi G. (Ed.): Das Phytoplankton des Süsswassers, Die Binnengewässer 16, 7/1: 1-1044, Schweizerbart Verlag, Stuttgart 1983.
Popovský Jiří, Lois Ann Pfiester 1990. Dinophyceae (Dinoflagellida). In: Ettl H., Gerloff J., Heynigh H., Mollenhauser D. (ed.). Süsswasserflora von Mitteleuropa Band 6. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena, Stuttgart. 272s.