A grant has been awarded to Dr. Richard E. Triemer of Michigan State University and Mark A. Farmer of the University of Georgia to complete a treatise on the euglenophyte genus Euglena and to produce updated treatises for the genera Phacus, Lepocinclis, Trachelomonas and Strombomonas. Euglenid flagellates represent one of the earliest diverging lineages of eukaryotes and are closely related to a group of disease causing organisms, the trypanosomes. Sometime before 410 million years ago the ancestor of modern euglenophytes acquired a chloroplast from a green alga via a secondary symbiotic event. Since that time the euglenophytes have diverged into a number of species distributed among several genera, the five largest ones being Euglena, Phacus, Lepocinclis, Trachelomonas and Strombomonas. This study will use molecular and morphological features and compare these to historical descriptions to characterize numerous euglenoid species and redefine their proper placement among these genera. Despite the importance of euglenoids to evolutionary biologists, ecologists, and the research community in general, few scientists have more than a passing knowledge of the group. The proposed research would generate a modern, illustrated treatise of the photosynthetic euglenoids, which would be widely available through conventional and electronic media, thus creating an invaluable resource for protozoologists, phycologists, limnologists, and ecologists. The questions relating to the genus and species concept in euglenoids are common to most protists. Our comprehensive approach using a combined morphological and molecular analysis to develop a phylogenetic species concept will be of great significance for other protistan groups.
