Morphological Variations of Gloiopeltis furcata (Postels et Ruprecht) J. Agardh (Rhodophyta) in the East Coast of Korea

Algae > Volume 11(1); 1996 > Article

Algae 1996;11(1): 91-94.

Jae Wan Lee, Byoung-Geon Oh, Hae-Bok Lee

Department of Biology, Chongju University, Department of Environment Management, Kumsung Environment College

ABSTRACT

Plants of G. furcata from the east coast of Korea are divided into 3 types morphologically. Among them the first type, the typical, usually occurs on rocky substratum of mean seawater level in winter. The second type, G. furcata f. intricata type, grows above the zone of the first type. The third type, immature type, grows in the upper intertidal zone in late summer, but at last remained immature and dead. The second type among them, comparing with the first, are slenderer and more irregularly dichotomous in branch, but their internal structures are not different from the first. The morphological difference between the first and the second types is presumed to due to the developing time from crustose basal discs and the tidal level. The plants which had been known as G. furcata f. intricata (Suringar, 1870; Okamura, 1936) is turned out to be the second type of this study, a developmental variation of G. furcata.

Key words: G. furcata, G. furcata f. intricata, thallus structures, taxonomy, phenotypic plasticity