Diversity and abundance of naked lobose amoebae belonging to the classes Tubulinea and Discosea in pond sediments in Moscow urban parks

Summary Naked lobose amoebae (also known as gymnamoebae) nowadays are split into the Tubulinea and Discosea lineages within the Amoebozoa supergroup; few genera belong to the Variosea lineage. Morphological identification of amoeba species is difficult because it requires study of clonal cultures. Most of species nowadays require molecular data for precise identification. The deficiency of these data results in the lack of reliable information on the local amoebae faunas, their abundance and distribution in natural and artificial habitats. In this paper we provide faunistic and quantitative data on naked lobose amoebae from bottom sediments of ponds located in urban parks of Moscow, Russia. We applied enrichment cultivation, followed by light-microscopic study, and in some cases – electron-microscopic and molecular studies. In total, 29 amoebae species were found. Most of recovered isolates might be new to science. The number of amoebae cells in the sediments, estimated using the most probable number method, varied from 75 to 288 cells ml -1 . Overall, the diversity and abundance of naked amoebae in urban park ponds is comparable with that in intact biotopes, and they are not affected by the urbanization-driven pollution. These results suggest that urban parks play an essential role in maintaining and preserving eukaryotic microbial diversity in the anthropogenic environment.