Eastern Pacific

An Overview of Rhodoliths: Ecological Importance and Conservation Emergency

“…Only a few protected marine areas in the Eastern Pacific consider rhodolith-forming algae as important habitats for preservation, e.g., in Mexico [23] and in isolated areas in Costa Rica and Panama [147].…”

Lithothamnion (Hapalidiales, Rhodophyta) in the changing Arctic and Subarctic: DNA sequencing of type and recent specimens provides a systematics foundation*

“…The species is widespread in the central and eastern North Atlantic (Greenland, Iceland, UK, Norway), but there is no evidence of its occurrence in the NW Atlantic; in the NE Pacific there are sporadic records from the Aleutian Islands (Robinson et al, 2017) and Prince William Sound (Konar et al, 2006), Alaska, USA south to Gwaii Haanas, British Columbia, Canada (Fig. 4).…”

“…In cold-water habitats, coralline algae can live for hundreds of years (Freiwald & Henrich, 1994;Halfar et al, 2013;Adey et al, 2015a), providing habitats for other seaweeds (Peña et al, 2014a) and for many epibenthic and cryptic macrofauna (Gagnon et al, 2012;Teichert, 2014). Over the past two decades, surveys have shown that rhodolith beds are widespread in the NE Pacific (Robinson et al, 2017), NW Atlantic (Gagnon et al, 2012;Copeland et al, 2013;Adey et al, 2015a), Labrador Sea and Western Greeland (Jørgensbye & Halfar, 2017;Schoenrock et al, 2018a,b) and the Arctic (Teichert et al, 2012;; this habitat is clearly much more abundant in Arctic environments than was previously assumed. Adey & Steneck (2001) identified as Arctic those marine habitats ranging in temperature from < 5 °C in summer to ~ -1.5 °C in winter, and as Subarctic, those experiencing 5-15 °C in summer and -1.5 to +1 °C in winter.…”