Taxonomic Revision of Gracilaria "verrucosa" from Russian Far East Based on Morphological and Molecular Data

Abstract

Gracilaria "verrucosa" is regarded an invalid name and the combination G. gracilis has been used in recent studies of Gracilaria from the Russian coast of the East Sea (=Sea of Japan). This has created nomenclatural confusion within members of the genus in this region. Here, we revise the taxonomy of G. "verrucosa" from Peter the Great Bay (East Sea, Russia) based on a morpho-anatomical characters and comparison of nuclear SSU rDNA, plastid rbcL and mitochondrial cox1 sequence data. No differences were found between the sequences for attached and unattached forms of Gracilaria "verrucosa". Molecular data also indicated that G. "verrucosa" from Peter the Great Bay is conspecific with Gracilaria vermiculophylla from the northwestern Pacific and the Russian population is closely related to Korean-Japanese populations from the East Sea rather than to populations on the Pacific coast of Japan.