All known members of Eumycetozoa generate fruiting bodies, either as sorocarps (in dictyostelids) or as sporocarps (in myxogastrids and protosporangiids). Within their life cycle, they may appear as a single haploidamoeboid cells (in dictyostelids), or as flagellated amoebae with two cilia that give rise to obligate amoebae with no cilia, from which the sporocarps develop (in myxogastrids and protosporangiids).[4]
The flagellated amoebae of myxogastrids and protosporangiids and non-flagellated amoebae of dictyostelids have a flat cell shape. They form wide pseudopodia with acutely pointed subpseudopodia (i.e. smaller pseudopodia that grow beneath). Unlike other amoebae, the pseudopodia lack a prominent streaming of granular cytoplasm.[4]
The name Eumycetozoa was first used by German mycologistFriedrich Wilhelm Zopf in 1884, although no formal taxonomic rank was given.[1] In 1975, mycologist Lindsay Shepherd Olive reintroduced the name Eumycetozoa as a class containing the three groups of fruiting amoebae traditionally included in this taxon: Myxogastria, Dictyostelia and Protostelia.[2] Olive hypothesized that all fruiting amoebae were grouped by this monophyletic taxon, and that the Myxogastria and Dictyostelia were also monophyletic taxa that evolved from a paraphyletic grade of Protostelia. This definition of Eumycetozoa, which included protostelids, was maintained in the 2005 cladistic classification of eukaryotes, where the name was synonymized with Mycetozoa.[10]
However, studies in the 2000s decade disproved this hypothesis. Both morphological and molecular studies showed that Eumycetozoa includes a number of non-fruiting amoeboid groups. More importantly, the Protostelia were discovered to be polyphyletic. The protosteloid type of fruiting body formation, initially considered the ancestral feature shared between all Eumycetozoa, has evolved independently at least in eight lineages within Amoebozoa (e.g. soliformoviids, cavosteliids, schizoplasmodiids, protosporangiids).[11][6] This discovery lead to the conclusion that the entirety of Amoebozoa became a synonym of Eumycetozoa, and was treated as such in the 2012 cladistic classification of eukaryotes. The term Amoebozoa was conserved as a familiar well-established name of popular usage, despite the term Eumycetozoa having priority as the older name.[12]
To preserve this widely used name, biologist Seungho Kang and his coauthors redefined Eumycetozoa in 2017 to include only one group of protosteloid amoebae, the Protosporangiida (also known as Ceratiomyxomycetes), which are a monophyletic taxon.[3][7] This usage corresponds to the 1975 hypothesis from Olive that postulates a clade of exclusively fruiting protists that includes myxogastrids, dictyostelids, and some protosteloid amoebae (in this case, the protosporangiids).[3] As of 2019, this renewed definition is accepted by the scientific community and appears in the modern cladistic classification of eukaryotes, revised by the International Society of Protistologists.[4] The name Macromycetozoa was suggested earlier,[13] but Eumycetozoa was chosen for being the oldest term.[3]
The name Mycetozoa was maintained in traditional classifications by some authors like Thomas Cavalier-Smith, who also used a renewed definition to include only protosporangiids. However this scheme did not acquire wide usage.[5]
Notes
^Zopf was the first to introduce the name Eumycetozoa, but no rank was given.[1]Olive reintroduced it in 1975 as a class-level rank.[2] Finally, in 2017 Kang and his coauthors renewed the definition of Eumycetozoa into its modern usage.[3]
References
^ abLado, Carlos; Eliasson, Uno (2017). "Taxonomy and Systematics: Current Knowledge and Approaches on the Taxonomic Treatment of Myxomycetes". In Stephenson, Steven L.; Rojas, Carlos (eds.). Myxomycetes: Biology, Systematics, Biogeography, and Ecology. Academic Press, Elsevier. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-805089-7.00007-X. ISBN978-0-12-805089-7.
^ abOlive LS (1975). The Mycetozoans. Academic Press, Elsevier. ISBN978-0125262507.
^ abcdefKang, Seungho; Tice, Alexander K; Spiegel, Frederick W; Silberman, Jeffrey D; Pánek, Tomáš; Čepička, Ivan; Kostka, Martin; Kosakyan, Anush; Alcântara, Daniel M C; Roger, Andrew J; Shadwick, Lora L; Smirnov, Alexey; Kudryavtsev, Alexander; Lahr, Daniel J G; Brown, Matthew W (September 2017). "Between a Pod and a Hard Test: The Deep Evolution of Amoebae". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 34 (9): 2258–2270. doi:10.1093/molbev/msx162. PMC5850466. PMID28505375.
^ abcdefAdl SM, Bass D, Lane CE, Lukeš J, Schoch CL, Smirnov A, Agatha S, Berney C, Brown MW, Burki F, Cárdenas P, Čepička I, Chistyakova L, del Campo J, Dunthorn M, Edvardsen B, Eglit Y, Guillou L, Hampl V, Heiss AA, Hoppenrath M, James TY, Karnkowska A, Karpov S, Kim E, Kolisko M, Kudryavtsev A, Lahr DJG, Lara E, Le Gall L, Lynn DH, Mann DG, Massana R, Mitchell EAD, Morrow C, Park JS, Pawlowski JW, Powell MJ, Richter DJ, Rueckert S, Shadwick L, Shimano S, Spiegel FW, Torruella G, Youssef N, Zlatogursky V, Zhang Q (2019). "Revisions to the Classification, Nomenclature, and Diversity of Eukaryotes". Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology. 66 (1): 4–119. doi:10.1111/jeu.12691. PMC6492006. PMID30257078.
^ abLeontyev, Dmitry V.; Schnittler, Martin (2017). "The Phylogeny of Myxomycetes". In Stephenson, Steven L.; Rojas, Carlos (eds.). Myxomycetes: Biology, Systematics, Biogeography, and Ecology. Academic Press, Elsevier. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-805089-7.00003-2. ISBN978-0-12-805089-7.