Towards a Monograph of the Ulvellaceae (Ulvophyceae, Chlorophyta)and related green algae

DEB-0075601Dr.查尔斯·J·奥凯利博士缅因州毕格罗海洋科学实验室的查尔斯·奥凯利和罗伯特·安德森因研究一组重要的微观绿色藻类的生物多样性和进化而获奖。 识别小生物是一个挑战，获得准确的信息使研究人员能够在必要时识别它们是一个挑战。 奥凯利和安德森的研究将使识别一个小的绿色藻类家族，石莼科的挑战减少。 石莼科的成员在海洋和淡水环境中很常见，但由于它们很小，它们通常不会被注意到-除了那些在商业上有价值的海藻和珊瑚中引起疾病的物种。 许多物种已被描述，但区分它们的特征很少且难以使用。 描述、记录和研究报告分散得很广，很难获得和收集，而且经常相互矛盾。 此外，看起来非常相似的物种可能并不密切相关。 石莼科物种之间的历史关系，以及看起来像是属于石莼科但不属于石莼科的物种之间的历史关系，并不为人所知，当发现时，可能会感到惊讶。 例如，石莼科的近亲不是小型藻类，而是大型藻类（石莼科的海葵）。 他们将收集广泛分散的关于石莼科藻类的报告，并将收集它们的活标本和保存标本，特别是从北美温带东部和西部海岸。 研究小组将使用现代文化，显微镜和分子方法解释这些材料，并产生更准确的物种概念和历史关系的重建。 他们希望发现并描述一些新物种。 这项工作的结果将公布在网上，在一个权威的，“一站式”购物网站的信息，这组藻类。 这项研究将为收集和传播关于地球小型生物多样性的信息的其他努力提供一个可行的模板。

DEB-0075601Dr. Charles J. O'KellyDrs. Charles O'Kelly and Robert Andersen of Maine's Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences have been given an award to study the biodiversity and evolution of an important group of microscopic green algae. It is a challenge to identify small living things, and it is a challenge to obtain accurate information that will allow researchers to identify them when necessary. Research by O'Kelly and Andersen will make identification less of a challenge for one family of small green algae, the Ulvellaceae. Members of the Ulvellaceae are common in marine and freshwater environments, but because they are small, they typically go unnoticed - except for those species that cause disease in commercially-valuable seaweeds and in corals. Many species have been described, but the characters separating them are few and hard to use. Descriptions, records, and research reports are widely scattered, hard to acquire and assemble, and frequently are contradictory. Also, species that look very much alike may not be closely related. The historical relationships among species of Ulvellaceae, and species that look like they belong to Ulvellaceae but do not, are not well known and, when discovered, may surprise. For example, the nearest relatives of Ulvellaceae are not small algae, but large ones (the sea lettuces, family Ulvaceae). They will assemble the widely-scattered reports on algae in the Ulvellaceae, and will collect living and preserved specimens of them, particularly from the temperate eastern and western coasts of North America. The research team will interpret these materials using modern culture, microscopical, and molecular methods, and produce more accurate species concepts and reconstructions of historical relationships. They expect to find and describe a number of new species. Results of this work will be posted online, at an authoritative, "one stop" shopping site for information on this group of algae. The study will provide a workable template for other efforts to assemble and distribute information on the diversity of Earth's small creatures.