While small in number and vanishingly rare, these humble algae are valuable in terms of the evolutionary pathways they reveal. They diverged from land plants over a billion years ago, making them descendants of the ancient algal ancestor that also gave rise to modern land plants (and various other algae). The study started by tracking down and screening all known algae that can be assigned to Chlorokybus, including cultures from public algal collections and fresh samples obtained in Ukraine, Chile, and Costa Rica. ‘We even tried to collect Chlorokybus in the place where it was first described in the 1940s, living on a stone monument in the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. But we could not find it, probably because the monument had been recently restored,’ says Dr Tatyana Darienko.
The researchers then conducted genetic analyses on the collected samples. The first analysis, based on just a few genes, showed marked genetic divergences among the various isolated algae. Hundreds of gene sequences obtained through large-scale genomic sequencing confirmed these unexpected results. This led the authors to recognize that there were actually five distinct species hiding under a single common name. These are called ‘cryptic species’ to reflect the difficulty or impossibility of telling them apart by simple observation. In fact, traditional microscopy revealed no obvious differences between the five species. However, the genetic data told a different story: there were clear differences in gene expression, proving there were genetic differences among the species that are not observable to the naked eye.
