Morphological & Molecular Assessment:
Pacific Costa Rican Gelidium spp.
(Gelidiales, Rhodophyta)
Amanda Grusz
Department of Biology and Marine Biology
University of North Carolina Wilmington
Wilmington, NC
alg4247@uncw.edu
Introduction to Red Algae
Taxonomic Classification
Economic Importance
• Pit plugs
• Cosmetics
• Phycobolin pigments
• Toothpaste
• Unstacked thylakoids in chloroplast
• Ice cream & other food products
• Floridian starch reserves
• High quality agarose gels
• No flagella
• No centrioles
Introduction to Red Algae
Introduction to Red Algae
Ice cream & other
food products
Toothpaste &
cosmetics
Agarose gels
Introduction to Gelidiales
Taxonomic Characteristics
• Triphasic life history with isomorphic alternation of generations
• Pit plugs with a single cap layer
• Uniaxial filaments branching regularly to form pseudoparenchyma
• Intercalary carpogonia
• Nutritive cells formed before fertilization
• Gonimoblast forms after fertilization connecting zygote to nutritive cells
Introduction to Gelidiales
Electron micrograph images of morphological features
History of Pacific Costa Rican Phycology
Early Collections
• Taylor (1945)
• Dawson (1957, 1959)
• ~160 algal species were collected
• Only 8 species were Gelidiales
• Only 3 species were Gelidium
History of Pacific Costa Rican Phycology
Taylor
Dawson
UNCW Collections: York, Thomas, & Freshwater
Localities (1999, 2000)
Playa Brasilito/Tamarindo
Playa Guiones
Playa Montezuma
PCR1
PCR3
PCR12
PCR8
Preliminary Analysis
Phylogenetic Evaluation
• Based on plastid gene rbcL
• Found 7 species
Species A
Gelidium floridanum Florida
Gelidium floridanum Costa Rica
CR5
Species B
Gelidium serrulatum Venezuela
Gelidium allanii New Zealand
Gelidium pacificum Taiwan
Gelidium robustum California
Gelidium pteridifolium South Africa
Gelidium americanum North Carolina
Gelidium lingulatum Chile
Gelidium pulchellum Spain
Gelidium latifolium France
Gelidium declerckii South Africa
Gelidium corneum Spain
Gelidium micropterum South Africa
Suhria vittata Namibia
Gelidium isabelae Australia
Onikusa pristoides SouthAfrica
PCR21
Species C
Gelidium pusillum Norway
Gelidium pusillum France
• All species belong to Gelidium
• Increases Pacific Costa Rican
Gelidium species by 200%
PCR11
PCR16
PCR20a
PCR18
Species D
Species F
Gelidium pluma Hawaii
Gelidium rex Chile
Onikusa japonica Taiwan
Gelidium vagum California
Gelidium bernabei Australia
PCR9
Gelidium capense South Africa
Gelidium coulteri California
Gelidium crinal North Carolina
Gelidium australe Australia
Gelidium asperum Australia
Ptilophora diversifolia South Africa
Ptilophora subcostata Japan
Ptilophora scalarimosa Philippines
Capreolia implexa Australia
Gelidium hommersandii Australia
Gelidium caulacantheum New Zealand
Gelidium divaricatum JAPAN
PCR17
PCR19
Species G
Species H
Gelidium pusillum v pacificum Hawaii
Pterocladiella capillacea Italy
Pterocladiella caerulescens Hawaii
Pterocladiella bartlettii Costa Rica
Pterocladia lucida New Zealand
Parviphycus tenuissimus Canary Is
Gelidiella acerosa Hawaii
Gelidiella acerosa Costa Rica
0.01 substitutions/site
Project Objectives
1. Identify & morphologically characterize species
2. Evaluate phylogenetic relationships among species
Materials & Methods
Vegetative & Reproductive Morphology
• Create herbarium specimens
• Make permanent slides
• Take photographs using Ziess AxioImager Z1
compound microscope
Phylogenetic Analyses
• Maximum Likelihood
• Parsimony
• Distance
Expectations
•Identify the 7 species collected
•Evaluate their evolutionary relationships
•Publish my findings in a peer-reviewed journal
•Present the results at a professional meeting
•Gain a working knowledge of methods & tools used to compare
morphological & phylogenetic plant characteristics