Living in the cracks: Two novel genera of Variosea (Amoebozoa) discovered on an urban sidewalk

Biological soil crusts represent a rich habitat for diverse and complex eukaryotic microbial communities. A unique but extremely common habitat is the urban sidewalk and its cracks that collect detritus. While these habitats are ubiquitous across the globe, little to no work has been conducted to characterize protists found there. Amoeboid protists are major predators of bacteria and other microbial eukaryotes in these microhabitats and therefore play a substantial ecological role. From sidewalk crack soil crusts, we have isolated three naked amoebae with finely tapered subpseudopodia, and a simple life cycle consisting of a trophic amoeba and a cyst stage. Using a holistic approach including light, electron, and fluorescence microscopy as well as phylogenetics using the ribosomal small subunit rRNA gene and phylogenomics using 230 nuclear genes, we find that these amoeboid organisms fail to match any previously described eukaryote genus. However, we determined the amoebae belong to the amoebozoan lineage Variosea based on phylogenetics. The molecular analyses place our isolates in two novel genera forming a grade at the base of the variosean group Protosteliida. These three novel varioseans among two novel genera and species are herein named “Kanabo kenzan” and “Parakanabo toge.”