Freshwater red tides due to dinoflagellates have caused spectacular and regular "summer reddening" in recent years in Baishihai Lake, a temperate, meromictic, meso- or oligotrophic, high-altitude, landslide-dammed, deep lake located at the eastern edge of Tibetan Plateau in China. Based on morphological and molecular analyses, the causative organism has been identified as a new woloszynskioid dinoflagellate, Tovellia diexiensis Q. Zhang et G.X. Liu sp. nov. The vegetative cells are 20-32 mu m long and 16-24 mu m wide. They have a hemispherical episome and a broadly rounded hyposome with a short characteristic antapical spine. Usually cells are bright red due to the presence of numerous red-pigmented bodies, which often masked the yellowish green discoid chloroplasts. The amphiesma of motile cells comprise mainly quadrilateral, pentagonal or hexagonal thin plates, arranged in 4-5 latitudinal series on the episome, 1 in the cingulum and 4 on, the hyposome. Molecular phylogenies based on small subunit ribosomal DNA and large subunit ribosomal DNA (LSU) indicate T diexiensis from Baishihai Lake to belong to the family Tovelliaceae, which was monophyletic in our LSU phylogenies. During the bloom-forming period in 2005, cell density of T diexiensis reached 9.15 x 10(5) cells L-1. Astaxanthin and its diester were found to be the major pigments in T diexiensis, resulting in a characteristic blood-red color of the water in Baishihai Lake.