Taxonomic survey on ciliate diversity in eastern area of Kangwon-province, Korea: Brief records of fifteen species unrecorded from Korea

In terms of the ciliate diversity in Korea, more than 200 species have been reported (National Institute of Bi­ ological Resources, 2012) and new species were increas­ ingly discovered using modern techniques (e.g., DNA analyses, silver staining) (for new species published in 2015, see Ji et al., 2015; Jo et al., 2015; Jung et al., 2015; Nam et al., 2015). However, because of ciliate’s small size and fra gile body, the taxonomic study in Korea was slow in progress and needs well­trained taxonomic ex­ perts to uncover the hidden diversity (See Aescht, 2013 ­ more than 1,000 species were reported in Austria). Unexplored environments for the ciliate diversity in Korea have been remained for huge area and few stud­ ies, usually from marine ecosystems, were reported from the eastern area of Kangwon­province, Korea (National Institute of Biological Resources, 2012; Park and Min, 2015). To uncover the hidden diversity of inhabitants in that area, here we focused on soil environments and identified twenty­six ciliates based on the observation of living cells and stained specimens. Of the species, fif­ teen ciliates are newly recorded from Korea.