| Mastophoroideae | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| (unranked): | Archaeplastida |
| Division: | Rhodophyta |
| Class: | Florideophyceae |
| Order: | Corallinales |
| Family: | Corallinaceae |
| Subfamily: | Mastophoroideae |
| Genera | |
The Mastophoroideae are a subfamily of Corallinaceaen [1] coralline algae with uniporate conceptacles. [2]
Coralline algae are red algae in the order Corallinales. They are characterized by a thallus that is hard because of calcareous deposits contained within the cell walls. The colors of these algae are most typically pink, or some other shade of red, but some species can be purple, yellow, blue, white, or gray-green. Coralline algae play an important role in the ecology of coral reefs. Sea urchins, parrot fish, and limpets and chitons feed on coralline algae. In the temperate Mediterranean Sea, coralline algae are the main builders of a typical algal reef, the Coralligène ("coralligenous"). Many are typically encrusting and rock-like, found in marine waters all over the world. Only one species lives in freshwater. Unattached specimens may form relatively smooth compact balls to warty or fruticose thalli.
Coralline rock is a type of rock formed by the death of layers of coralline algae. It is visually quite bright like the algae, and is often desired as aquarium decoration. Since it is formed from the dead algae, it contains some nutrients and calcium carbonate, which has allowed it to be used in some building structures.
Coralline means "resembling coral" and may refer to:
Crustose is a habit of some types of algae and lichens in which the organism grows tightly appressed to a substrate, forming a biological layer. Crustose adheres very closely to the substrates at all points. Crustose is found on rocks and tree bark. Some species of marine algae of the Rhodophyta, in particular members of the order Corallinales, family Corallinaceae, subfamily Melobesioideae with cell walls containing calcium carbonate grow to great depths in the intertidal zone, forming crusts on various substrates. The substrate can be rocks throughout the intertidal zone, or, as in the case of the Corallinales, reef-building corals, and other living organisms including plants, such as mangroves and animals such as shelled molluscs. The coralline red algae are major members of coral reef communities, cementing the corals together with their crusts. Among the brown algae, the order Ralfsiales comprises two families of crustose algae.
The history of phycology is the history of the scientific study of algae. Human interest in plants as food goes back into the origins of the species and knowledge of algae can be traced back more than two thousand years. However, only in the last three hundred years has that knowledge evolved into a rapidly developing science.
Rhodoliths are colorful, unattached calcareous nodules, composed of crustose, benthic marine red algae that resemble coral. Rhodolith beds create biogenic habitat for diverse benthic communities. The rhodolithic growth habit has been attained by a number of unrelated coralline red algae, organisms that deposit calcium carbonate within their cell walls to form hard structures or nodules that resemble beds of coral.
Wataru Ishijima was a paleontologist and geologist. Ishijima was one of the most prolific researchers of fossil calcareous algae. After graduating from the Imperial Fisheries Institute in 1927, Ishijima joined the Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Faculty of Science, Tohoku Imperial University (Sendai) from 1927–1931. He then worked at the Institute of Geology, Taihoku Imperial University (Taipei) during 1942–1945 and then at the Rikkyo University (Tokyo) from 1945–1980. His doctoral dissertation was submitted to Tohoku University and was privately published by Yūhodō. He described a total of 139 taxa of fossil calcareous algae including at least 114 species of Corallinales, and he produced more than 45 publications on coralline algal taxonomy.
In algal anatomy, a pit connection is a hole in the septum between two algal cells, and is found only in the red algae − specifically, all orders except the Porphyridiales and haploid Bangiales. They are often stoppered with proteinaceous "pit plugs". By contrast, many fungi contain septal pores − an unrelated phenomenon.
The Corallinaceae are one of the two extant Coralline families of red algae; they are differentiated from the morphologically similar Sporolithaceae by their formation of grouped sporangial chambers, clustered into sori. The Corallinoideae is monophyletic; the other subfamilies form another monophyletic group.
The Rhodogorgonales are an order of red algae, a sister group to the corallines. They are always thalloid and calcified; their calcification is very different from the corallines, as individual calcite crystals are deposited in the cell wall of specialised cells; this suggests that the evolution of calcification may have been independent from the corallines. They have no fossil record.
The extinct Solenoporaceae have traditionally been interpreted as a group of red algae ancestral to the Corallinales.
Scutellastra cochlear is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Patellidae, one of the families of true limpets. It is commonly known as the snail patella, the pear limpet or the spoon limpet and is native to South Africa. It often grows in association with the crustose coralline alga Spongites yendoi and a filamentous red alga which it cultivates in a garden. It was first described by the malacologist Ignaz von Born in 1778 as Patella cochlear.
The Sporolithaceae are one of the two extant families of coralline algae. They are differentiated from the other family, the Corallinaceae, by their formation of conceptacles with one or many pores.
The Lithophylloideae are a monophyletic subfamily of Corallinaceaen Coralline algae with uniporate conceptacles.
The Melobesioideae are a subfamily of Corallinacean Coralline algae with multiporate conceptacles.
Archaeolithophyllum is a genus of conceptacle-bearing red alga that falls in the coralline stem group. It somewhat resembles Lithophyllum.
Arenigiphyllum is a genus of alga from the Ordovician that falls in the coralline stem group. Only its vegetative anatomy is known.
Petrophyton is a genus of alga that falls in the coralline stem group.
Palaeoaplysina is a genus of tabular, calcified fossils that are a component of many Late Palaeozoic reefs. The fossil acted as a baffle to trap sediment. Historically interpreted as a sponge or hydrozoan, recent studies are converging to its classification in the coralline stem group, placing it among the red algae.
Lithophyllum orbiculatum is a species of thalloid coralline algae, which are a red algae whose cell walls contain calcareous deposits.