THE MARINE ALGAE OF THE GULF OF CALIFORNIA 



(Forty-seven Plates) 



Elmer Yale Dawson 

 Department of Botany, University of California 



INTRODUCTION 

 Historical Summary 



The first alga known to have been taken and preserved from the Gulf 

 of California is a specimen of Wurdemannia miniata collected in 1860 by 

 Edward Palmer on the shore of Carmen Island. In 1890 T. S. Brandegee 

 and Walter E. Bryant of the third expedition of the California Academy 

 of Sciences to Lower California collected a considerable number of speci- 

 mens, particularly of Sargassum. These, however, received no mention in 

 print until thirty- four years later. It was not until 1895 that any account 

 of algal material from this region came into press, that published by M. 

 Paul Hariot being the first (Algues du Golfe de Calif ornie recueillies par 

 M. Diguet). Five marine and two fresh-water species were recorded. The 

 collection consisted mainly of crustaceous corallines which have, since 

 Hariot's work of 1895, been re-examined and reported on by other au- 

 thorities on the Corallinaceae : Foslie, Heydrich, and Lemoine. 



The year 1904 marked the first collection in the northern Gulf, made 

 by D. T. MacDougal at San Felipe Bay. In 1911 G. J. Vives gathered a 

 number of beach-drift specimens at La Paz, and these together with Mac- 

 Dougal's material found their way to Marshall A. Howe, who published 

 that year an account of the combined 24 species ( Phycological Studies V) . 



The most important publication to date on the marine algae of this 

 region was made by W. A. Setchell and N. L. Gardner in 1924 (New 

 Marine Algae from the Gulf of California). These authors had at hand 

 a far greater quantity of material than the aggregate of previous collec- 

 tions, and their account includes designations of 144 species and varieties 

 of which 111 were described as new. The bulk of the collection was com- 

 posed of specimens secured by Ivan M. Johnston on the expedition of the 

 California Academy of Sciences to the Gulf of California in the summer 

 of 1921, but the old collections of Brandegee and Bryant were included 

 in the study as well as a collection made in 1917 by Dr. and Mrs. Mar- 

 chant. 



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