Bibliographic Detail

Kraft, G.T. & Saunders, G.W., 2014

Reference:
Kraft, G.T. & Saunders, G.W. (2014). Crebradomus and Dissimularia, new genera in the family Chondrymeniaceae (Gigartinales, Rhodophyta) from the central, southern and western Pacific Ocean. Phycologia 53(2): 146-166.

Publication Date:
2014

Abstract:
Two new genera of tropical-/subtropical-Pacific macroalgae are proposed. The monotypic Crebradomus gen. nov., based on C. gongylocarpus sp. nov., is restricted to Lord Howe Island in the southern Australasian-Pacific Ocean. Dissimularia gen. nov. consists of the type species, D. dactylocarpa sp. nov., from its Lord Howe Island type locality, as well as from the Hawaiian Islands, Guam and possibly Burma and the southern Great Barrier Reef, plus three geographically restricted, virtually cryptic species from small islands or atolls in Samoa and Micronesia. The long-problematical Cryptonemia? umbraticola is shown on the basis of molecular studies of recent collections from its type locality, remote Palmyra Atoll, to represent a distinct species of Dissimularia, D. umbraticola comb. nov., with D. tauensis sp. nov. and D. withallii sp. nov. from Tau and Jarvis Islands, respectively, also belonging to this complex. Morphological features common to these taxa included turf-like, often imbricate thin blades of irregular contour, thalli that tended to occupy shaded habitats on coral reefs between 1.5- and 40-m depths, and blade sections that consisted of a shallow anticlinal cortex and a broad, lax to densely compact medulla of mostly periclinal filaments interspersed with varying numbers of anticlinally and obliquely traversing filaments. Only Crebredomus was found cystocarpic, the carposporophytes densely aggregated in verrucose marginal pods and consisting of a lengthy narrow fusion cell of irregular contours and a candelabra-shaped distal cluster of gonimoblast filaments bearing terminal chains of two or three carposporangia beneath a narrow ostiole. Male gametophytes and tetrasporophytes remain unknown in both genera. Molecular data indicated the generic distinctness of Crebradomus and Dissimularia, as well as the whole complex as members of the recently designated family Chondrymeniaceae of the order Gigartinales.