This alga grow on glasses that I have hang in water of a pond near sea. The protonema has branches, with the main protenema contain several columns of cells while the branches consist of only one column of cells. Its chromatophore looks like those of Ulothrix.
Ulothrix are usually unbranched. You can check Stegioclonium sp., branched from the beneath of the septum. Pithophora have branching above the septum.
Dear Liu,
this taxon belong to the genus Stigeoclonium. Ulothrix is You see the uniseriate filaments of the erect filament system oppositelely branched. Ulothrix is unbranched and looks quite different. Please see John, Whitoon and Brook (2011): The freshwater algal flora of the british Isles , Cambridge University Press for identification. But please be aware, that the identification of the Stigeoclonium species is debatable. So identification at genus level will be enough. If you want to see pictures. See our identification help of freshwater benthic algae (https://www.lanuv.nrw.de/uploads/tx_commercedownloads/40009.pdf). You can download it for free. However i have to apologize, that it is written in german. But it has many pictures.
Best regards
Antje
Thanks very much for help from Prof. Ahmed and Dr. Gutowski. I have never seen references about the genus Stigeoclonium before, and the book of Gutowski is really very helpful!
Sorry, it is definitely not Stigeoclonium. This thallus has obviously multiseriate main axis. It is rather a young filament of Ulva.
Dear Roman,
sorry, but even young filaments of Ulva look quite different. Erect filaments of Stigeoclonium consist of "very long and short cells, the latter single or in rows of 4 or more cells" (John et al 2011). However, this remembers us, that it is always problematic to determine algae only with a single picture and no information about the environment. Cheers Antje
Dear Michael, yes, you are right. I was to quick in aswering. Thanks for your adwise. Cheers Antje
Thanks for attention of yours! As I have said that this branched filaments grew on the glasses that I have hung in the water. The glasses has be put in water for two weeks in a pond in Macau. The pond is connected with seawater, but there is a gate between the pond and the sea water, and during the period of my experiment, the gate was closed. The phytoplankton in the water consist both seawater species and freshwater species. The filaments was brushed off the glasses and was broken during this process. According to my observation, the main axis consists both multiserial cells and uniserial cells, but the branches generally consist uniserial cells. I have consulted the references, and it seems that cells of old filaments will divide obiquely for some species of stigeoclonium. Might it be this situation?
Dear Weiqiu,
please take additional photos including the oldest parts of thalli. It will be helpful for identification.
Best regards, Roman
It seems that we are now focusing on one point!!! We should be careful about the identification with single or two-three photos, rather we can suggest and let the researchers do the rest after through examination!!
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