Lake Baikal: hotspot of endemic diatoms

A provisional inventory of achnanthoid, fragilariod, canal - raphe diatoms and the genus DIPLONEIS in Lake Baikal. This volume includes revisions of diatoms from the following genera: CYMATOPLEURA, NITZSCHIA, DIPLONEIS, EUCOCCONEIS, ARAYEVIA, NUPELA, PLANOTHIDIUM, PLATESSA, POSEUDOSTAUROSIRA and STAUROSIRELLA. Two new genera are described: Popovskayella gen. nov. and Skabitschewskia gen. nov. A guideline was to illustrate and to name entieties than can be easily distinguished from more or less similar taxa living in better investigated regions of the world. This inventory will also allow to find out wherelse these Baikal taxa may occur in Eurasia. From a quite small number of samples from the Skabitschewsky collection, others from the International Darwin Initiative Project 15 years ago and actual own gatherings 160 species new to science have been identified, in addition to the 222 species described in the first volume already. It must be kept in mind that in this context 12 genera only have been studied so far in detail in a second step of the investigations.