The Dancing Star: Reinvestigation of Artodiscus saltans (Variosea, Amoebozoa) Penard 1890.

Artodiscus saltans, first described by Penard (1890), has a unique morphology. Without genetic data it could not yet been reliably placed into a wider taxonomical context. We present morphological data for A. saltans from different aquatic habitats of four European countries. We subjected three cells of one strain from Germany to molecular analyses and, interestingly, obtained six different rDNA sequences. Phylogenetic analyses of these SSU rDNA sequences revealed that A. saltans branches close to the amoebozoan Multicilia marina (Variosea, Amoebozoa).