This Master's thesis deals with diversity within the Micrasterias papillifera/ M. radiosa (Desmidiales) species complex. Both species are inhabitants of endangered biotops, like peat-bogs and, like other desmids, are used for biomonitoring. Many described varieties for both of them can be found in taxonomic literature, but their morphology is overlapping and revision of this species complex seemed to be necessary. All strains were isolated from peat-bogs and lakes across Europe and my dataset was properly completed by strains from algal collections. Results of phylogenetic analysis of sequences for ITS and psaA showed, that the real intraspecific diversity of Micrasterias papillifera Brébisson ex Ralfs was overestimated. Although I could find a little intraspecific diversity within the ‚papillifera' lineage in the phylogenetic tree based on ITS sequences, it did not correspond with a morphology of isolates. M. papillifera possess unexpected morphological plasticity and also some isolates designated as Micrasterias radiosa Ralfs were present in this lineage. On the contrary, there were only a few isolates in the lineage ‚radiosa'. This species seems to be relatively rare and probably has limited distribution. Both species are morphologically well delimited from each other on the basis of several characters...

The delineation of desmid species was traditionally based on purely morphological features. However, a frequent misinterpretation of morphological variability in desmids has led in the past to extensive taxonomical confusion within this important group of green algae which complicates the interpretation of their biodiversity in freshwater ecology, biogeography and biomonitoring. Consequently, I focused in this thesis predominantly on a previously neglected issue, the application of polyphasic approaches in the species-level taxonomy of desmids. In the most studies, a combination of both traditional morphological and modern molecular phylogenetic and geometric morphometric methods has been used to evaluate the taxonomy of selected desmid species, particularly representatives of the morphologically complex genera Micrasterias and Xanthidium. In two papers, I used the combination of traditional morphological and autecological data to clear up the taxonomy of several morphologically less prominent desmid taxa. Generally, the results of the thesis demonstrated that the way we recently see the diversity and distribution of desmids should be thoroughly changed. The real species diversity is mostly distinctly finer than that estimated by classical morphological taxonomy, often corresponds to varieties of...

Micrasterias rotata is a phylogenetically and morphologically well defined species that is widely distributed in Central Europe in a broad temperature gradient. For its complex cell shape Micrasterias rotata is a suitable model organism for cell morphogenesis research. This thesis investigated whether there could be a different pattern in morphological integration resulting from the temperature stress in Micrasterias rotata cells cultivated on a temperature gradient. The optimum and a limits of growth on the temperature gradient were related to the sampling locations of the studied strains isolated from a lowland wetland and an high alpine lake. Differences in the growth rates among the strains suggested a local adaptation to the climatic conditions of the original locations but relatively high values of the assumed optimum growth temperature suggested an intra- species evolutionary adaptation. The temperature-related size reduction rule was not confirmed; however, a similar pattern of variation in shape occurred in both strains. The morphological integration analysis has basically confirmed that the Micrasterias cell is composed of a number of morphological modules related to its differentiation into the lobes and sublobes. Integration between the lobes of the opposite semicell was primarily...