UC specimens and range limits for Colpomenia peregrina

• 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: Although the syntype localities are in Atlantic Europe, the species originated in Asia (see Status). It is broadly distributed on the west coast.

Status: This species is cosmopolitan. An mitochonrial marker haplotype network (which included specimens from Sunset Bay, Oregon and Santa Catalina Island, California) revealed four distinct groups, separated by 7 to 26 mutation steps. Northwest Pacific populations were present in each group (but dominant in one), whereas southwest Pacific and the Atlantic populations each were present in one group. The network and phylogenetic analyses, along with patterns of genetic diversity, suggested a northwest Pacific center of origin, expanding first to the southwest Pacific, then to the northeast Pacific, and most recently to the north Atlantic (Lee et al. 2014).

Habitat: Low intertidal to shallow subtidal, in mostly sheltered environments

Life History: In Hokkaido, Japan, sporophytes occur from spring to autumn, bearing ectocarpoid plurilocular sporangia during spring and summer and unilocular sporangia in autumn. Fertile sporophytes were minute and discoid, 1-3 mm in diameter, epilithic or epiphytic, consisting of prostrate and erect filaments, and bearing ascocysts. In culture, zygotes and unfused gametes developed into prostrate sporophytes that were similar in morphology to field-collected sporophytes. These sporophytes produced plurilocular sporangia at 5-20°C, mainly in long-day photoperiods, and unilocular sporangia mainly at 15 and 20°C, both in short days. Spores released from plurilocular sporangia on the sporophytes developed again into sporophytes; however, unispores developed into saccate annual gametophytes (Kogame & Yamagishi 1997).

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 peregrina (Sauv.) Ham.

Colpomenia sinuosa var. peregrina Sauvageau 1927b: 321. C. peregrina (Sauv.) Hamel 1931-39 (1937): 201; Blackler 1964: 50. C. sinuosa sensu Saunders 1898: 164; sensu Setchell & Gardner 1925: 539; sensu Smith 1944: 128 (as applied to C. California specimens).

Thalli globular, with little or no division, thin and smooth, often narrowly attached, drying to greenish; with 1 or 2 rows of cortical cells and 2 or 3 rows of subcortical cells; colorless hairs superficial, in clusters; plurangia forming extensive continuous areas on lower parts of vesicle, with 2 rows of loculi and sometimes with bifurcate apices, 18-22 µm long, 5-8 µm diam.; colorless paraphyses abundant.

Common on rocks or other algae, mostly lower intertidal, Alaska to La Jolla, Calif. Common in N. Atlantic. Type locality: Mediterranean.

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: This species can be distinguished from C. sinuosa by its (usually) epiphytic habit, the presence of superficial clusters of colorless hairs, thinner medulla and sori without cuticle.