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Electronic Flora of South Australia Genus Fact Sheet

Genus CAPREOLIA Guiry & Womersley 1993: 267

Phylum Rhodophyta – Class Florideophyceae – Order Gelidiales – Family Gelidiaceae

Thallus mat-like, stoloniferous and much branched with largely decumbent branches, some becoming erect, firm and cartilaginous, attached by fascicles of rhizoids. Structure uniaxial with a more or less conspicuous apical cell, differentiating into a reticulate medulla with numerous rhizines and a compact cortex of ovoid cells.

Reproduction: Sexual thalli dioecious. Carpogonial branches intercalary on suprabasal cells of third-order filaments, without nutritive filaments, with the zygote developing directly to form a more or less stellate vegetative thallus on the surface of the female plant, which subsequently attaches to the substratum and forms a tetrasporophyte, the carposporophyte generation being absent. Spermatangia in superficial sori, cut off from surface cortical cells.

Tetrasporophytes with more-or-less erect stichidia, compressed, elongate; tetrasporangia acropetally developed in double rows ("chevrons") of similar age, cruciately or decussately divided.

Life history diphasic, essentially heteromorphic.

Type (and only) species: C. implexa Guiry & Womersley 1993: 267.

Taxonomic notes: Capreolia differs from other genera of the Gelidiales in the absence of a carposporophyte and probably of nutritive cells, features demonstrated only by culture studies since virtually all field collections are tetrasporangial.

References:

GUIRY, M.D. & WOMERSLEY, H.B.S. (1993). Capreolia implexa gen. et sp. nov. in Australia and New Zealand (Gélidiales, Rhodophyta); an intertidal red alga with an unusual life history. Phycologia 32, 266–277.

The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia Part IIIA complete list of references.

Author: H.B.S. Womersley & M.D. Guiry

Publication: Womersley, H.B.S. (14 January, 1994)
The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia
Rhodophyta. Part IIIA, Bangiophyceae and Florideophyceae (to Gigartinales)
Reproduced with permission from The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia Part IIIA 1994, by H.B.S. Womersley. Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra. Copyright Commonwealth of Australia.


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