The South African estuarine specialist Codium tenue (Bryopsidales, Chlorophyta) discovered in a south-western Australian estuary

Abstract

Codium tenue, previously known reliably only from estuarine habitats in South Africa, is recorded from a similar habitat in the Walpole and Nornalup Inlet system, on the south coast of Western Australia. The Australian C. tenue has a repeatedly divaricately dichotomously branched thallus to 11.5 cm in height, with markedly compressed axes up to 1 cm in width at branch dichotomies, but distally attenuating to terete branch apices. Structurally, thalli have cortices with distinctive cuneate utricles up to 1310 μm long and 650 μm in diameter. Both the habit and structural morphology essentially agree with C. tenue as known in South Africa. Sequences generated from the Australian specimens are a..