Comparative study of the oospore morphology of two populations of a rare species Chara baueri A. Braun in Cedynia (Poland) and Batzlow (Germany)

Abstract

Morphological features of oospores of Chara baueri A. Braun, one of the rarest charophyte species worldwide, were studied based on 100 oospores collected from a small and temporarily dried mid-field pond near Cedynia, Western Poland. This is the first Polish and fifth presently known locality of this species. For comparison 67 oospores from a German population (similar pond localized near Batzlow, Germany) were also measured. So far, data on morphology of C. baueri oospores as well as the species ecology are limited. The only more detailed study of oospores for this species was earlier performed on 15 oospores from Kazakhstan. Largest polar axis (LPA, length), largest equatorial diameter (LED, width), isopolarity index (ISI = LPA/LED × 100), number of ridges, width of fossa, distance from apical pole to LED (AND) and anisipolarity index (ANI = AND/LPA × 100) were measured. The comparative analysis revealed that the oospores from Poland are generally bigger and more prolate than the Ger­man ones. The differences for most of studied parameters were statistically significant. The finding is discussed in the context of habitat differentiation of both studied sites. Moreover, the results obtained of oospore measurements for both populations differs from most of the data known so far from the literature.

Keywords

• Chara baueri
• oospores
• Characeae
• charophytes