UC specimens and range limits for Bryopsis pennata var. minor

• Blue markers: specimen records
• Yellow marker: type locality, if present
• Red markers: endpoints of range from literature

View map from the Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria

Notes: Broadly distributed worldwide; on both coasts of Baja California, mainland Mexico. In California: Pacific Grove, Monterey Co. (USNM61293, USNM61294, USNM61295); Laguna Beach, Shaw's Cove, Orange Co.; San Nicolas Island; San Diego, San Diego Co.

Status: Distinctive species; confirmed by DNA sequence: Laguna Beach, California (Lam & Zechman 2006). This Mexican and Californian species should be re-evaluated by comparing it with B. pennata Lamouroux (type locality: Antilles, West Indies) and other species in the genus.

Habitat: Mid-intertidal, on tops of rocks or reefs in exposed environments

Life History: Likely to be similar to other species in the genus, with gametic meiosis.

Search Sequences in GenBank

Bryopsis Lamouroux 1809b

Thalli erect, usually densely branched but with few orders of branches. Branches mostly with percurrent axes, pinnately or radially branched. Chloroplasts numerous, discoid, with conspicuous pyrenoid. Thalli monoecious or dioecious, the gametes liberated through several pores in wall of gametangium. Zygote developing directly, without sporangial phase in life history.

Bryopsis pennatula J. Ag.

J. Agardh 1847: 6; Kützing 1856: 27; Setchell & Gardner 1920b: 158; Hollenberg & Abbott 1966: 14 (incl. synonymy).

Thalli tufted to matted, to 3 cm tall, with mostly simple erect axes, these to 250 µm diam., arising from matted basal branches; erect axes each bearing short terminal tuft of branchlets, these cylindrical, blunt, distichous to partly radial, mostly less than 1 mm long, 20-30 µm diam., limited to terminal 2 mm of erect axes.

Infrequent, chiefly atop large rocks, midtidal to upper intertidal, Pacific Grove, Santa Monica, and Laguna Beach, Calif., to St. Augustine (Oaxaca; type locality), Mexico.

On certain substrata (e.g. sponge tissue), attachment may involve a penetrating branch resembling a taproot, bearing a dense compound tuft of slender erect branches. This form is known only from Pacific Grove, Calif.

Excerpt from Abbott, I. A., & Hollenberg, G. J. (1976). Marine algae of California. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California. xii [xiii] + 827 pp., 701 figs.

Notes: Bryopsis pennatula was cited in the protologue of B. pennata var. minor; thus the two names have the same type (Silva et al. 1996). Names compete for priority only within their rank. At the rank of variety, the correct name is B. pennata var. minor; at the rank of species, the correct name is B. pennatula. Because they are based on the same type, B. pennata var. minor is effectively a new name for B. pennatula.