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Diversity of ciliates of the family Nyctotheridae in cockroaches
Soviš, Matyáš ; Čepička, Ivan (advisor) ; Škaloud, Pavel (referee)
Cockroaches are tremendously interesting group of insects with broad morphological diversity and a wide range of lifestyles. They are known to host a plethora of fascinating protists ranging from excavate flagellates through gregarines and amoebozoans to extraordinary ciliates of the group Armophorea. There is however, in contrast to the flagellates, only scarce information on these intestinal ciliates. The available data are mostly only morphological and there is a limited information on their host specificity. Therefore, we chose to inspect the diversity of ciliates in cockroaches, both in the stock cultures of Department of Zoology on Charles University as well as in those collected in nature. We studied their presence in various cockroach lineages, obtained 18S rRNA gene sequence data, and assessed their phylogenetic relationships. We also performed protargol staining of the cells to characterize the morphology of individual lineages.
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Anaerobic ciliates as a model group for studying the biodiversity and symbioses in anoxic environments
Rotterová, Johana ; Čepička, Ivan (advisor) ; Gentekaki, Eleni (referee) ; Silberman, Jeffrey David (referee)
Ciliates are also of the most extensively studied and diverse groups of unicellular eukaryotes, and yet, their anaerobic representatives have been largely neglected; in part due to culturing difficulties. Although all main ciliate lineages contain anaerobes, their diversity and evolution of anaerobiosis are especially poorly understood and just starting to gain attention. In fact, Ciliophora is an excellent model group to study adaptations to life in anoxia, since it, apart from the aerobic majority, includes free-living and endobiotic obligately anaerobic lineages, facultative anaerobes, microaerophiles, and microaerotolerant species. The diversity of Metopida, the free-living order of obligately anaerobic class Armophorea, has been partially revised and significantly broadened during the past years, including numerous redescriptions using modern methods, as well as the description of novel families Tropidoatractidae and Apometopidae, several genera, and multiple species. Oxygen plays a crucial role in ATP production via oxidative phosphorylation that takes place in the mitochondrion in most known eukaryotes. Nevertheless, anaerobic ciliates, among many other eukaryotes that have adapted to low oxygen concentrations or even its absence, have modified their mitochondria and energetic metabolism to...
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