MORPHOLOGICAL AND GENETIC CRITERIA IN THE TAXONOMY OF CYANOPHYTA CYANOBACTERIA

Molecular techniques have introduced new approaches to the phylogeny and taxonomy of Cyanophyta/Cyanobacteria. One method, the sequencing of the 16S ribosomal RNA, has been applied to 29 cyanophyte strains and produced interesting results (TOMIOKA & SUGIURA 1983, GIOVANNONI et al. 1988). Integration of this new, taxonomically useful information with the results of the classical morphological analyses traditionally used in the taxonomy of cyanophytes is the subject of this paper. Advantages and limitations of different approaches are discussed, and conflicts as well as consensus between morphological properties of the strains under study, and their position in the phylogenetic tree of GIOVANNONI et al. (1988) are reviewed.