Transfer of the small diatoms Thalassiosira proschkinae and T. spinulata to the genus Minidiscus and their taxonomic re-description.

The marine diatoms Thalassiosira proschkinae and T. spinulata are relatively small in size; their taxonomic identities have been debated owing to the diverse morphological variations. In the present study, we isolated both morphotypes from Korean coastal waters and examined their fine structures and conducted molecular sequence comparisons. The morphological and molecular analyses showed that T. proschkinae and T. spinulata were certainly distinct, and phenotypic plasticity of valve structure was not noted. Based on the morphological similarity and phylogenetic relationship, we transferred T. proschkinae and T. spinulata to another genus Minidiscus within Thalassiosirales that includes small-sized species and proposed new combination names, Minidiscus proschkinae (Makarova) Park & Lee comb. nov. and Minidiscus spinulatus (Takano) Park & Lee comb. nov., respectively. The genus description of Minidiscus was emended.