MARINE RED ALGAE OF PACIFIC MEXICO 



PART I 



BANGIALES TO 

 CORALLINACEAE SUBF. CORALLINOIDEAE 



E. Yale Dawson 



INTRODUCTION 



Until recent years the Pacific Coast of Mexico, with the exception of 

 the Gulf of California, has been so poorly represented by collections of 

 marine algae that a marine flora of the region could not be contemplated. 

 Of late, however, four expeditions to Pacific Baja California and the 

 Gulf of California aboard the Allan Hancock Foundation research 

 vessel, Velero IV, have enabled the writer to obtain extensive collections 

 from the coasts and islands of these regions. Together with earlier exist- 

 ing collections, and the author's collections from the Gulf of California 

 and from Pacific mainland Mexico obtained in 1946-47 under a Guggen- 

 heim Fellowship, these constitute a sufficiently comprehensive coverage 

 of the Mexican west coast to permit the initiation of a marine flora. 

 Since the varied climates of this long coast line support a large number 

 of species, many of which are poorly represented or even unknown in the 

 literature, the size of the project is such as to require its division into 

 suitable publication units. It has been decided to begin the series with 

 treatment of the Rhodophyceae inasmuch as this group as a whole has 

 received no floristic monographic treatment heretofore on the Pacific 

 Coast. The works of Setchell and Gardner in the Chlorophyceae and 

 Melanophyceae were so carefully and systematically done that new 

 treatments in these groups present much less of the urgency called for in 

 the long neglected Red Algae. The present first part of the Rhodophy- 

 ceae extends into the Corallinaceae, but stops short of the crustose mem- 

 bers of this family. These time-consuming and taxonomically difficult 

 plants will be dealt with in another part of this series now in prepara- 

 tion. 



The general features and some of the ecological relationships of the 

 marine flora of Pacific Mexico have been presented elsewhere by the 

 writer (Dawson 1944, 1949, 1951). The reader is referred to these 

 papers pending the appearance of a more comprehensive account of the 

 ecology and geographic distribution which is intended to follow the 

 systematic parts. 



[1] 



