UC specimens and range limits for Endoplura aurea

• 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: Reported from Orange Co. through Baja California, Mexico, and Japan. Because it firmly adheres to rock, there are few specimens in herbaria. Most (see Smithsonian National Herbarium) are Hollenberg's, from Orange Co. (Laguna Beach and Corona del Mar) and Dawson's, from Baja California, Mexico.

Status: This species has not been studied since its original description. It needs molecular analysis to compare it to Japanese E. aurea, for which rbcL has been sequenced (Lim et al. 2007), and to other brown crusts.

Habitat: Upper intertidal bedrock pools, often with extensive coverage

Life History: Unknown.

Search Sequences in GenBank

Endoplura Hollenberg 1969

Thalli saxicolous, crustose, firmly adhering to substratum without rhizoids, with indistinct horizontal stratum and closely adjoined erect filaments. Chloroplasts discoid, small, several to many per cell. Unangia unknown, probably lacking; plurangia in sori below surface of crust, uniseriate or partly biseriate, with mostly 2-4 terminal sterile cells.

A monotypic genus.

Endoplura aurea Hollenb.

Hollenberg 1969: 300.

Thalli light yellow to golden brown, nongelatinous, to 8 cm broad, 300-600 µm thick, relatively smooth, without evident growth lines; cells of erect filaments 6-7.5 µm diam., mostly about same length; plurangia forming irregular, relatively large sori 100-130 µm deep anticlinally, each cell remaining undivided or dividing longitudinally into 2-4 small cells; sterile terminal cells 5-7 µm diam., about twice as long; hairs not observed.

Frequent, mostly in shallow upper intertidal pools on wave-swept rocks, Corona del Mar (Orange Co.), Calif., to Gulf of Calif. Type locality: Laguna Beach, 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: This species is distinguished by its firm adherence to rock, without rhizoids, growth lines or coalescence; adjoined vegetative filaments that do not separate under pressure; 2-5 sterile cells terminating plurangia, giving them a submerged appearance in cross-section; and multiple chloroplasts per cell.