Seaweeds of the South African South Coast

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Order Corallinales

Family Corallinaceae

Subfamily Corallinoideae

Plants pink, bushy, with erect axes up to 6 (-8) cm high. Axes mainly in one plane, dichotomously branched. Segments in upper parts of thallus distinctively winged, 0.5 – 1.0 (-2) mm high in the middle, up to 2.5 (-4) mm across apices of wings, tips of wings pointed, blunt, or variously incised. Lobe angle 30-75^o. Holdfast of tangled stolons with terete, un-lobed segments 0.3-0.5 mm long, 0.2-0.5 mm in diameter. Adventitious branches from surfaces of segments rare. Genicula barely visible. Conceptacles 1-3 per lobe, visible as swellings in upper margins of lobes.

Collections, ecology and regional distribution

Found in the sublittoral fringe and shallow sublttoral zone. Recorded from False Bay along the whole south coast and Kwazulu-Natal (17-58) into Mozambique.

World distribution: Recorded from various localities in the tropical Indian Ocean and from Micronesia in the Pacific Ocean (Guiry & Guiry 2014).

Type locality: Durban, South Africa.

Note: 1. This species contains two entities that were formerly recognized as subspecies of Cheilosporum cultratum: (subsp cultratum and subsp multifidum).
2. In a DNA barcoding study (Kogame et al. 2017) this species formed a morphologically identifiable and well-supported clade.
3. There are two morphotypes of Jania cultrata specimens in BOL (as C. cultratum). South coast specimens are relatively fine (smaller segments: 0.5-1.0 mm long, 1.8 to 2.5 mm across tips), grayish, and shorter. Some KZN specimens (e.g. BOL 15959, from Palm Beach) are brighter pink and larger in all respects (up to 8 cm tall, segments up to 2 mm long and 4 mm across apices).

 

Jania cultrata, De Hoop.

Jania cultrata, detail of segment shape.

Jania cultrata, herbarium specimen.

 

References Jania cultrata

Guiry, M.D. & Guiry, G.M. 2014. AlgaeBase. World-wide electronic publication, National University of Ireland, Galway. http://www.algaebase.org; searched on 12 March 2014.

Kim, J. H., Guiry M. D., Oak, J. H., Choi, D. S., Hosung Chung, S-H. K., Choi, H-G., 2007. Phylogenetic relationships within the tribe Janieae (Corallinales, Rhodophyta) based on molecular and morphological data: A reappraisal of Jania. Journal of Phycology 43: 1310-1319.

Kogame, K., Uwai, S., Anderson, R.J., Choi, H-G & J.J. Bolton. 2017. DNA barcoding of South African geniculate coralline red algae (Corallinales, Rhodophyta). South African Journal of Botany 108: 337-341.

 

Cite this record as:

Anderson RJ, Stegenga H, Bolton JJ. 2016. Seaweeds of the South African South Coast.
World Wide Web electronic publication, University of Cape Town, http://southafrseaweeds.uct.ac.za; Accessed on 26 April 2024.