Red algae vs. grass

Apr 29, 2017 • 3:19 PM UTC

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Microorganisms

Maggie_M

I am a first-year graduate student in an Applied Marine and Watershed Sciences masters program at CSU Monterey Bay. I am interested in examining the natural world on all available scales. I have worked extensively in science museums, and I deeply believe in the value of informal science education that allows learning and exploration of nature through play and hands-on discovery.

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Recently, my Marine Ecological Systems course took another trip to the intertidal zone near Monterey Bay. I we were comparing a highly disturbed area to one that is less visited. It was a bright sunny day, and we visited at mid-tide as the tide was returning. I took the opportunity to collect a couple of pieces of algae.

The first bit of algae I collected was from a free-floating piece of red algae, which I did not identify further. The second piece was from a patch of coralline algae, Calliarthron sp, that grew in a tide pool at the higher end of what I observed to be it’s range.

These species are both in the Phylum Rhodophyta, one of the oldest and largest groups of eukaryotic algae. They are red because they produce the masking pigment phycoerythrin, which absorbs blue light and reflects red light. This pigment is beneficial because blue light penetrates the farthest in water, allowing plants to absorb the most light possible while submerged.
This pigment is one of the many ways these algae are distinct from terrestrial plants. Unlike plants, which develop from embryos, red algae have complex life history with alternation of generations:

Coralline red algea are distinct in that they produce calcium carbonate deposits within their cell walls to strengthen the thallus. There are both articulated and non-articulated species, but the one I found is articulated, or geniculate, which means the calcified sections are separated by non-calicified sections, allowing the algae to be flexible.
So what does all this look like in a foldscope?

Unidentified red algae

Coralline Algae And to compare, a bit of grass from my yard:

Red algae vs. grass

Maggie_M

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