Leveillea jungermannioides (E.Hering & G.Martens) Harv.

Scientific Description

Habit and structure. Thallus light pink to red, prostrate and spreading to 2–4 cm, attached by holdfasts of clustered rhizoids, with percurrent axes bearing alternate leaf-like blades 0.5–1.0 mm long, 0.5–0.8 mm wide, the blades in each series (i.e. every second blade) slightly overlapping to separate. Prostrate axes terete, polysiphonous, dorsiventral, with circinate apices. Structure with 7 pericentral cells in the prostrate axes and 3 pericentral cells in the lateral branches. Apices of lateral branches rounded, often incurved, mostly with terminal terete polysiphonous deciduous tips bearing branched trichoblasts.

Reproduction. Spermatangia borne on blade like branches arising near the base of determinate branches, the fertile blade reaching a similar size to the bearing branch, with 2 or 3 marginal rows of sterile cells, but otherwise covered entirely by spermatangia. Tetrasporangia tetrahedral, borne in series of 3 or 4 sporangia in modified indeterminate laterals, subspherical to ellipsoidal, to 120–145 µm long, 70–90 µm diam. Other reproductive structures not observed.

Distribution. Widely distributed in the tropical and subtropical Indo-West Pacific.

Habitat. epiphytic on a variety of larger algae and seagrasses.

[After J.M. Huisman in Algae of Australia: Marine Benthic Algae of North-western Australia, 2. Red Algae: 530–532 (2018)]