Environmental and human factors are inducing a drastic decline in many marine algae in regions with a high floristic richness as in the Canary Islands. Simultaneously, undescribed algal species continue to be discovered, suggesting a probable loss in diversity, before being properly identified and catalogued. Turf-forming Gelidiales occur in marine littoral communities from tropical to warm temperate regions and are challenging to identify correctly because of their small size and simple morphology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present work analysed the main changes in subtidal algal assemblages in the last decade in an oceanic archipelago (Canary Islands--eastern Atlantic Ocean). Changes result from increases in cover of ephemeral benthic algae, such as the non-native chlorophyte Pseudotetraspora marina and the native cyanophytes Blennothrix lyngbyacea, Schizothrix calcicola and Schizothrix mexicana. Ephemeral algae overgrow subtidal assemblages which are extensively dominated by Lobophora variegata, but competitively do not exclude other species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Many tropical marine macroalgae are reported from all three ocean basins, though these very wide distributions may simply be an artifact resulting from inadequate taxonomy that fails to take into account cryptic diversity. Alternatively, pantropical distributions challenge the belief of limited intrinsic dispersal capacity of marine seaweeds and the effectiveness of the north-south oriented continents as dispersal barriers. We aimed to re-assess the distribution of two allegedly circumtropical brown algae, Dictyota ciliolata and D.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMesophyllum sphaericum sp. nov. is described based on spherical maërl individuals (up to 10 cm) collected in a shallow subtidal maërl bed in Galicia (NW Spain).
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