Molecular and morphological investigation of сosmopolitan diatom Hantzschia amphioxys (Ehrenb.) Grunow (Bacillariophyceae)

Until now, the diversity of representatives from the genus Hantzschia Grunow inhabiting of soils in Ukraine and European Russia was limited by the species Hantzschia amphioxys (Ehrenb.) Grunow, H. elongatа (Hantzsch) Grunow
and H. vivax (W. Sm.) Grunow with some ifraspecific taxa (Aleksakhina and Shtina 1984; Kostikov et al. 2001; Tsarenko et al. 2009; Maltseva 2009). At the same time,the adoption of a narrow species concept by many researchers led to the description of a number of new species within the genus Hantzschia. Thus, 17 new taxa were identified by H. Lange-Bertalot with co-authors (Lange-Bertalot et al. 2003) mainly from samples from Sardinia island, 1 taxon is from springs in Germany (Werum and Lange-Bertalot 2004) and 5 new taxa from fresh water bodies and soil of the South Atlantic islands (Zidarova et al. 2010). Until recently, many of the
described species were identified with Hantzschia amphioxys, which is positioned as a cosmopolitan species.