UC specimens and range limits for Dictyota flabellata

• 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 Rincon Beach State Park, Ventura Co., south through Baja California, Mexico. A specimen from Pecho Beach, San Luis Obispo Co. collected in 1917 was identified by E.Y. Dawson as D. flabellata, though it seems to be out of range.

Status: This southern species should be examined with molecular methods to distinguish it from the many species in this genus that occur in Baja California, Mexico.

Habitat: Low intertidal pools and kelp forest habitat

Life History: Alternation of isomorphic generations

Search Sequences in GenBank

Dictyota Lamouroux 1809

Thalli erect, complanate, without midrib, typically dichotomo-flabellately branched, arising from branched stolons. Branches each with single large apical cell. Medulla of a single layer of large colorless cells. Cortex usually of a single layer of much smaller pigmented cells in longitudinal rows; hairs common on sterile thalli. Dioecious; oogamous; reproductive structures exserted. Sporangia unilocular, scattered over both surfaces of blades, each producing 4 aplanospores; oogonia in sori, each oogonium producing a single relatively large egg. Antheridia plurilocular, in sori with sterile margin.

Dictyota flabellata (Coll.) S. & G.

Dilophus flabellatus Collins, P.B.-A., 1895-1919 1901: no. 834. Dictyota flabellata (Coll.) Setchell & Gardner 1924b: 12 (in part); 1925: 652 (in part); Dawson 1950b: 89 (incl. synonymy).

Thalli medium brown, 10-20(26) cm tall, with little or no tendency to pinnate branching; branches (2)6-10(15) mm broad, with rounded apices, without marginal teeth, occasionally with numerous surface proliferations; medulla monostromatic throughout; cortex essentially monostromatic throughout; antheridia in scattered oval sori on both surfaces; oogonia in scattered sori, these mostly elongate, to 380 µm long; oogonia 35-38 µm diam.

Frequent, saxicolous, intertidal or subtidal (to 22 m), S. Calif. to Gulf of Calif. and Panama; in Calif., known from vicinity of Ventura southward, formerly common. Type locality: La Jolla, 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.