UC specimens and range limits for Colpomenia tuberculata

• 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: From warm water areas of Ecuador (Galapagos Islands), Costa Rica, Mexico, and Baja California, Mexico. (N.B. These specimens lack coordinates and are not on the map.) Southern California, including San Nicolas, Santa Barbara, Santa Catalina, and San Clemente islands, represents the northern end of this broad range. Records of specimens to the north are misidentifications.

Status: Cox3 sequences from a specimen of Colpomenia tuberculata from El Sargento, Baja California, Mexico show that it is distinct from other species (Lee et al. 2011). This species is sister to C. sinuosa in an rbcL tree (Lee et al. 2013).

Habitat: On rocks

Life History: Not studied, but probably a heteromorphic life-history pattern with alternating crustose sporophytes and saccate gametophytes (Kogame 1997, Toste et al. 2003).

Search Sequences in GenBank

Colpomenia Derbès & Solier 1851

Thalli globular or saccate, with broad basal attachment, at first solid, later becoming hollow. Walls several to many cells thick. Inner cells large and colorless, progressively smaller and more pigmented outwardly. Plurangia at first limited to areas around hair tufts, later forming extensive surface areas. Unicellular, colorless paraphyses frequent among plurangia. Unangia unknown.

Colpomenia tuberculata Saund.

Saunders 1898: 164. Colpomenia sinuosa f. tuberculata (Saund.) Setchell & Gardner 1903: 242; 1925: 541.

Thalli fleshy, crisped, and somewhat coriaceous, medium to light brown, usually slightly flattened, 5-10+ cm diam., broadly attached, often with folded or convoluted surface; thallus at maturity covered with blunt projections or pointed tubercles protruding 4-10 mm; outer layers of 3-5 cell rows; inner cortex of 5-8 rows of large, thin-walled cells. Plurangia 3-4 µm diam., 20-25 µm long.

Mostly on rocks, San Pedro (type locality), Calif., to La Paz, Baja Calif., and Ecuador; more abundant in southern part of range; very abundant in places in Gulf of 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.