Five Groups in the Genus Allovahlkampfia and the Description of the New Species Vahlkampfia bulbosis n.sp.

Heterolobosea is one of the major protist groups in soils. While an increasing number of soil heterolobosean species has been described, we have likely only scratched the surface of heterolobosean diversity in soils. Here, we expand this knowledge by morphologically and molecularly classifying four novel strains. One was identified as Naegleria clarki, while the remaining three strains had no identical Blast hit against GenBank and could only be reliably identified to the genus level: two strains as Allovahlkampfia spp. and one strain as Vahlkampfia sp. One Allovahlkampfia strain was most closely affiliated with Allovahlkampfia sp. Nl64 and the other strain was affiliated with ‘Solumitrus’ palustris, which is now named Allovahlkampfia palustris comb.nov. As there are only two valid species described within Allovahlkampfia, we combined all published sequences related to Allovahlkampfia and propose five new groups within this genus. The last strain was most closely related, but clearly distinct from, Vahlkampfia orchilla, based on DNA barcoding. As such, we propose this amoeba as a new species named Vahlkampfia bulbosis n.sp. Together, our study extends the described diversity of soil heteroloboseans through the description of a new Vahlkampfia species and by revising the morphologically and phylogenetically diverse genus Allovahlkampfia.