Cyanobacteria of Greece: an annotated checklist

Spyros Gkelis; Iordanis Ourailidis; Manthos Panou; Nikos Pappas

doi:10.3897/BDJ.4.e10084

Biodiversity Data Journal : Taxonomic Paper

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Taxonomic Paper

Cyanobacteria of Greece: an annotated checklist

Spyros Gkelis^‡, Iordanis Ourailidis^‡, Manthos Panou^‡, Nikos Pappas^‡

‡ Department of Botany, School of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

Corresponding author:

Academic editor: Vasilis Gerovasileiou

Received: 04 Aug 2016 | Accepted: 24 Aug 2016 | Published: 01 Nov 2016

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Gkelis S, Ourailidis I, Panou M, Pappas N (2016) Cyanobacteria of Greece: an annotated checklist. Biodiversity Data Journal 4: e10084. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.4.e10084

Abstract

Background

The checklist of Greek Cyanobacteria was created in the framework of the Greek Taxon Information System (GTIS), an initiative of the LifeWatchGreece Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) that has resumed efforts to compile a complete checklist of species reported from Greece. This list was created from exhaustive search of the scientific literature of the last 60 years. All records of taxa known to occur in Greece were taxonomically updated.

New information

The checklist of Greek Cyanobacteria comprises 543 species, classified in 130 genera, 41 families, and 8 orders. The orders Synechococcales and Oscillatoriales have the highest number of species (158 and 153 species, respectively), whereas these two orders along with Nostocales and Chroococcales cover 93% of the known Greek cyanobacteria species. It is worth mentioning that 18 species have been initially described from Greek habitats. The marine epilithic Ammatoidea aegea described from Saronikos Gulf is considered endemic to this area. Our bibliographic review shows that Greece hosts a high diversity of cyanobacteria, suggesting that the Mediterranean area is also a hot spot for microbes.

Keywords

blue-green algae, Cyanophyceae, bacteria, microorganisms, Aegean Sea, freshwater, marine, checklist, biodiversity, Mediterranean

Introduction

The history of natural science is directly linked to Greek civilization, since the older written references to plants, animals, and algae are found in the Homeric Epics dating back to the 8^th century BC; the first record of algae in the Western literature appears in Homer’s Iliad: “the dark waves uprear their heads and scatter their sea-wrack (phycos) in all directions” [Iliad IX.1 translated by Batler (1998)]. The Greek philosopher, and first marine biologist, Aristotle, who has established scientific knowledge for many animal and plant taxa (see Voultsiadou 2007) reported “red snow” in 4^th century BC: “after lying for some time, snow turns slightly red” (Historia Animalium 552b8 translated by Peck 1970); this is considered as one of the oldest records of snow algae [unicellular Chlorophyta, like Chlamydomonas or Chloromonas according to Duval et al. (1999)].

In modern times, research on Greek microflora, Cyanobacteria included, started in the 20^th century with the studies of freshwater algae by Stanković (1931) and Skuja (1937). In the subsequent two decades, no published work in microflora can be traced until the limnological survey by Ananiadis (1956). During the 1960s Konstantinos Anagnostidis performs two extensive studies of Cyanobacteria from thermal springs (Anagnostidis 1961) and sulphur-communities (Sulphuretum) in marine and freshwater habitats of Greece (Anagnostidis 1968). These taxonomic studies revealed the occurrence of a great number of cyanobacteria taxa, led to the description of several new species (e.g. Geitlerinema apolloniae Anagnostidis, 2001; Leptolyngbya phormidioides (Anagnostidis) Anagnostidis & Komárek, 1988; Pseudanabaena lonchoides Anagnostidis, 1961; Pseudophormidium battersii (Gomont) Anagnostidis, 2001; Borzia periklei Anagnostidis in (Anagnostidis and Komárek 1988)), and were later widely used to establish the modern classification system of Cyanobacteria (Anagnostidis and Komárek 1985, Anagnostidis and Komárek 1988, Anagnostidis and Komárek 1990, Komárek and Anagnostidis 1986, Komárek and Anagnostidis 1989). Although a lot of the valuable taxonomic, ecological, and biogeographical information recorded in Anagnostidis' monographs is now contained in the “Süsswasserflora von Mitteleuropa” series (Komárek 2013, Komárek and Anagnostidis 1999, Komárek and Anagnostidis 2005, Komárek 2013), many details of his work remain unavailable to the broader scientific community since they were published in Greek.

The systematic research on Greek Cyanobacteria started in the 1980s with a series of publications on cyanobacterial taxonomy and species composition (Anagnostidis and Economou-Amilli 1978, Anagnostidis and Economou–Amilli 1980, Anagnostidis et al. 1981, Anagnostidis et al. 1982, Overbeck et al. 1982, Anagnostidis et al. 1983, Anagnostidis and Pantazidou 1985, Anagnostidis and Pantazidou 1988a, Anagnostidis and Pantazidou 1988b, Anagnostidis and Pantazidou 1988c, Hindak and Moustaka 1988, Anagnostidis et al. 1988a, Anagnostidis and Pantazidou 1991a, Anagnostidis and Pantazidou 1991b, Anagnostidis and Roussomoustakaki 1991, Tryfon 1996), as well as on population dynamics (Moustaka-Gouni 1988, Moustaka-Gouni and Nikolaidis 1990, Moustaka-Gouni and Nikolaidis 1992, Tafas and Economou-Amilli 1997, Tryfon et al. 1997, Montesanto et al. 1999, Moustaka-Gouni et al. 2000, Temponeras et al. 2000, Vardaka et al. 2000) regarding both the freshwater and marine waterbodies. The recent research on cyanobacterial diversity in Greece comprises polyphasic or multidisciplinary studies of cyanobacteria strains (Gkelis et al. 2005b, Lamprinou et al. 2011, Lamprinou et al. 2013a, Lamprinou et al. 2013b, Gkelis et al. 2015b, Gkelis and Panou 2016, Bravakos et al. 2016), natural populations (Moustaka-Gouni et al. 2009, Moustaka-Gouni et al. 2010, Papadimitriou et al. 2013, Gkelis and Zaoutsos 2014, Gkelis et al. 2014, Gkelis et al. 2015a), as well as ecological works (e.g. Lamprinou et al. 2009, Katsiapi et al. 2011, Katsiapi et al. 2012).

Despite the increased research efforts, knowledge of diversity and distribution of Cyanobacteria in Greece is still inconsistent since no list on local cyanobacterial flora has ever been published. Modern biodiversity research faces an ever increasing rate of data generation and efforts are made to structure, aggregate, link and process these data in a meaningful way (Koureas et al. 2016). Currently, the Greek Taxon Information System (GTIS), an initiative launched by the LifeWatchGreece Research Infrastructure (ESFRI), is resuming efforts to compile a database of all species reported from Greece; a prerequisite for GTIS is to have checklists for each taxonomic group (Bailly et al. 2016). The aim of this study is to create a checklist of cyanobacterial taxa inhabiting the area of Greece on the basis of the recent taxonomic revisions.

Materials and methods

The Checklist of Greek Cyanobacteria was created in the framework of the Greek Taxon Information System (GTIS), an initiative of the LifeWatchGreece Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) that has resumed efforts to compile a complete checklist of all species reported from Greece (Bailly et al. 2016). In that publication, a methodology is described to produce Preliminary Checklists only. However, in the present case of Cyanobacteria, the status of the list for Greece was quite advanced, and the recent primary literature was exhaustively searched for this work; the present list is thus considered as an updated, annotated, and archived checklist.

The data for this study were collected through extensive search in the scientific literature of the last 60 years. The search was performed in Scopus and Web of Science using the keywords: Greece AND cyanobacteria, Greece AND phytoplankton, Greece AND cyanoprokaryota, Greece AND blue-green algae. Furthermore, the two exhaustive monographs by Anagnostidis (Anagnostidis 1961, Anagnostidis 1968) were studied and the cyanobacterial taxa were recorded. All geographical areas of Greece and all biomes (freshwater, marine, terrestrial, caves etc.) and biotic forms (planktic, benthic, periphytic, endolithic, epizoic etc.) were considered.

The taxonomic status of the recorded cyanobacterial taxa was checked and updated, where necessary, to the currently accepted taxonomically species using Komárek and Anagnostidis (1999), Komárek and Anagnostidis (2005), Komárek (2013), and the AlgaeBase (Guiry and Guiry 2016). The species were classified to suprageneric taxa according to the latest taxonomic revisions on the basis of polyphasic methods (Komárek et al. 2014, Komárek 2016). Not valid species, species of unclear taxonomic status, and species transferred to other phyla were excluded from the list. Also, infraspecific taxa that are not valid or need revision were not included in the list. The first publication mentioning a taxon's occurrence in Greece and the original name used in that record is given under Notes and Nomeclature, respectively.

Data resources

Notes:

Notes:

Nomenclature: