PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS OF THE LARGE SUBUNIT RUBISCO GENE SUPPORTS THE EXCLUSION OF AVRAINVILLEA AND CLADOCEPHALUS FROM THE UDOTEACEAE (BRYOPSIDALES, CHLOROPHYTA)¹

Abstract

The placement of Avrainvillea and Cladocephalus in the family Udoteaceae (order Bryopsidales) has been questioned on the basis of nuclear, plastid, and other ultrastructural characteristics unique to these genera. Bayesian analysis of the chloroplast-encoded LSU RUBISCO (rbcL) gene showed that the Udoteaceae is paraphyletic. Cladocephalus luteofuscus (P. Crouan et H. Crouan) Børgesen, Avrainvillea nigricans f. floridana D. Littler et Littler, and A. mazei G. Murray et Boodle form a clade with the freshwater alga Dichotomosiphon tuberosus (A. Braun ex Kütz.) A. Ernst that is basal to a clade that includes other members of the Udoteaceae, the Halimedaceae, and the Caulerpaceae. The noncalcified species Boodleopsis pusilla (Collins) W. R. Taylor, A. B. Joly et Bernat. groups with species of the calcified Udoteacean genera Penicillus, Rhipocephalus, Udotea, and Halimeda.

A multi-locus time-calibrated phylogeny of the siphonous green algae

“…The same authors proposed the family Avrainvilleaceae to harbor the extant genera Avrainvillea and Cladocephalus and some fossil genera. However, the ultrastructural affinities between Dichotomosiphon, Avrainvillea and Cladocephalus (Curtis et al, 2008) and the limited DNA sequence divergence between Dichotomosiphon and Avrainvillea shown here suggest that transferring Avrainvillea and Cladocephalus to the Dichotomosiphonaceae would be more appropriate. Although the fossil taxa in the Avrainvilleaceae are more difficult to evaluate because no ultrastructural evidence is available to link them unequivocally to the Dichotomosiphonaceae, we nevertheless propose their transfer to this family for taxonomic convenience.…”

“…The bryopsidalean family Udoteaceae disintegrates. Besides the transfer of Avrainvillea and Cladocephalus to the Dichotomosiphonaceae, which was previously indicated by Curtis et al (2008), a number of Rhipilia and Rhipiliopsis species form a lineage of their own and the remainder of the Udoteaceae receives little statistical phylogenetic support. We have applied the name Rhipiliaceae to the clade of Rhipilia and Rhipiliopsis species.…”

Rhipidosiphon lewmanomontiae sp. nov. (Bryopsidales, Chlorophyta), a calcified udoteacean alga from the central Indo-Pacific based on morphological and molecular investigations

“…Sequences of the large subunit of the ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase gene (rbcL) were generated following previously described protocols ) and submitted to GenBank. The newly generated data were added to an alignment of Udoteaceae rbcL sequences downloaded from GenBank (Hanyuda et al 2000;Lam & Zechman 2006;Curtis et al 2008;Verbruggen et al 2009). Rhipiliaceae, Pseudocodiaceae and Halimedaceae sequences were used as outgroups to root the phylogenetic trees ).…”

A new record of Avrainvillea cf. erecta (Berkeley) A. Gepp & E. S. Gepp (Bryopsidales, Chlorophyta) from urbanized estuaries in the Hawaiian Islands

“…These gene regions were selected as informative and reliably sequenced regions for siphonous green algae (Leliaert et al 2014) and their use in previous Bryopsidales phylogenetic studies (e.g. Curtis et al 2008, Verbruggen et al 2009a, Verbruggen et al 2009b, Wade and Sherwood 2017, Wade and Sherwood 2018). For the type specimens, a modified protocol was used with short, overlapping fragments for each gene, rather than amplifying the entire fragment at once; a new protocol was developed for rbc L and the tuf A protocol described by Sauvage et al 2014 was used.…”