UC specimens and range limits for Bryopsis hypnoides

• Blue markers: specimen records
• Yellow marker: type locality, if present
• Red markers: endpoints of range from literature

View map from the Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria

Notes: Broadly distributed in Europe. Northern west coast record: Friday Harbor Labs, San Juan Island, Washington, FHL-A-00093. Southern records: In California, San Pedro Bay (floating) Los Angeles Co. (collected in 1900); reported for San Diego, and on into Baja California, Gulf of California, Mexico, and Panama.

Status: Confirmed by DNA sequence: Bodega Bay, Sonoma Co. (Lam & Zechman 2006). This species merits investigation. Three weedy strains of Bryopsis that resemble B. hynoides were reported from San Francisco Bay by Silva (1979), on the basis of unpublished culture work by Dennis Shevlin. Their identities have not been determined. Their behavior, including explosive population growth, is that of introduced species.

Habitat: Low intertidal - subtidal, often in protected habitats, associated with sand

Life History: Not completely known for Pacific coast populations, but involving diploid gametophytes that produce male and female anisogametes in separate sectors of same pinnule; in Europe, prostrate filamentous germlings from zygotes developing directly into bisexual gametophytes or indirectly by stephanospores or anisogametes (Burrows 1991, Kermarrec 1980, Bartlett and South 1973, Rietema 1971, Neumann 1969a).

Search Sequences in GenBank

Illustration from DeCew's Guide to the Seaweeds of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Northern California

Bryopsis Lamouroux 1809b

Thalli erect, usually densely branched but with few orders of branches. Branches mostly with percurrent axes, pinnately or radially branched. Chloroplasts numerous, discoid, with conspicuous pyrenoid. Thalli monoecious or dioecious, the gametes liberated through several pores in wall of gametangium. Zygote developing directly, without sporangial phase in life history.

Bryopsis hypnoides Lamour.

Lamouroux 1809: 135; Setchell & Gardner 1920b: 159; Smith 1944: 73.

Thalli tufted, to 4 cm tall, dull green, profusely radially branched; main erect axes to 430 µm diam. long, downwardly directed rhizoids arising from base of main branches; ultimate branches 60-75 µm diam., 2-5 mm long, gradually tapering upward, abruptly constricted at bases.

Occasional to locally abundant, on sand-covered rocks, mostly midtidal, S. Br. Columbia to Panama; in Calif., from Humboldt Co. to San Pedro. Widely distributed. Type locality: Mediterranean.

Excerpt from Abbott, I. A., & Hollenberg, G. J. (1976). Marine algae of California. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California. xii [xiii] + 827 pp., 701 figs.