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Abstract:
Species of the red algal genus Acrochaetium are present in the global marine flora, but at best only preliminary assessments of species diversity and phylogeny have been attempted for the genus. During an ongoing floristic survey of Canadian seaweeds, we routinely encountered species assigned to this genus epibiotic on other organisms, which provided the material and motivation for the current study. Seven Atlantic, three Pacific and a single subarctic species were identified in analysis of COI-5P (cytochrome oxidase subunit I) sequences with typical levels of intraspecific (0–0.3%) and interspecific (7.9–19.3%) variation observed except between western and eastern Atlantic populations of A. humile (0.9%). Within a historical Atlantic species ‘complex’, we established that A. virgatulum is synonymous with A. secundatum; however, A. luxurians was an independent lineage and is resurrected. A Pacific isolate of A. secundatum was collected and represents an extension of the reported range for this species. In a second complex, Pacific A. arcuatum and A. vagum were synonymous, as suggested in the literature previously, but A. porphyrae was genetically and anatomically distinct. Further, A. porphyrae did not group with Acrochaetium in nuclear-encoded LSU rRNA and combined LSU / COI-5P analyses, and Rhododrewia gen. nov. is proposed for R. porphyrae (Drew) comb. nov.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Mohammad Afzal, Taylor Birch, Natasha Chisti, Bethany Herrmann, Ali Johnson, Hana Kucera, Line Le Gall, Dan McDevit and Tanya Moore are thanked for contributing COI-5P sequences. The Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre and Bonne Bay Marine Station kindly provided facilities during collections in British Columbia and Newfoundland. We thank Dr. Norm Sloan for encouraging us to study the seaweeds of Haida Gwaii, as well as Parks Canada and the Haida Nation, especially staff of the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site, for extensive support of our field studies in this unique region. We thank the curators at the herbaria from which specimen loans were made: Berkeley, Copenhagen, Lund, Michigan, Nova Scotia Museum and Trinity College Dublin. Sampling of type material at Trinity College Dublin was made possible by a John S. Little International Study Fellowship to SLC. Marina Morabito helped to interpret Latin texts. This research was made possible by funds to GWS through the Canadian Barcode of Life Network from Genome Canada through the Ontario Genomics Institute, NSERC and other sponsors listed at www.BOLNET.ca. Additional support was provided by the Canada Research Chair Program, the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation. Comments from the Associate Editor and three reviewers improved this manuscript.
SUPPLEMENTARY DATA
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found online at http://dx.doi.org/10.2216/13–224.1.s1.
