Eunotia pseudoparallela

This taxon was found in a periphyton sample from a protected minerotrophic peatland as part of a study conducted in three fens (a rich, moderate, and poor) located within a wetland complex in the
Tanana River floodplain outside the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest (35 km southeast of Fairbanks) in interior Alaska.

We defined the peatland types following Rydin and Jeglum (2013) which described moderate fens as having a pH range of 5-7 and are moderately rich in dissolved minerals and vegetation diversity, including sedges and brown mosses with sparsely distributed Sphagnum moss and poor fens as peatlands with extremely low concentrations of dissolved minerals dominated by Sphagnum moss species capable of acidifying the surrounding environment (pH 4–5.5) thereby inhibiting many vascular plants. The moderate fen in which E. pseudoparallela was most frequently encountered was composed of both brown moss and Sphagnum species, with less dense vegetation of C. atherodes, E. fluviatile, and P. palustris. The poor fen was primarily composed of Sphagnum species with sparsely distributed E. fluviatile, P. palustris, and Eriophorum vaginatum with a mean pH of 5.77 during the sampling season (May-August 2017), where E. pseudoparallela was still observed but less frequently encountered. Eunotia pseudoparallela is considered to be very rare or not documented in central and southern Europe, fairly rare in most regions of the Holarctic, and abundant in Scandinavia (Lange-Bertalot et al. 2011).