548 
PACIFIC SCIENCE, Vol. XV, October 1961 
Hawaii, Lanai, and Maui variously by Robert 
K. S. Lee, Mikihiko Oguri, Warren Wilson, and 
the author have resulted in no traces of this 
alga being found with one exception. The ex- 
ception is a collection made by the author 
(numbered 19431), Mrs. Meng Sung Doty and 
Mr. Lee along the north shore of Lanai in No- 
vember, I960, where the alga was washed onto 
the muddy sand beach in abundance, free or 
attached to shells, coral, or even rocks up to 
2 lb. in weight. Unfortunately, the Kawaihae 
area on Hawaii and the shores of Molokai have 
not been specifically searched for this genus, but 
our collections made during earlier years from 
these places do not include Acanthophora. 
In the light of the ability and persistent 
vigor of the algologists who have at one time or 
another concerned themselves with the marine 
algae of the Hawaiian Islands, e.g., Drs. W. A. 
Setchell, Josephine Tilden, G. F. Papenfuss, 4 I. 
A. Abbott, and earlier, the Misses Minnie Reed 
and Marie Neal, and Mrs. Nina H. Loomis, it 
seems unlikely that this alga would have been 
overlooked had it been consistently present. It 
is a conspicuous alga. The older Polynesians in 
Hawaii seem to have had no name for Acan- 
thophora. If pressed for a Polynesian name now- 
adays, the common man professing native acu- 
men will apply local names such as manauea, 
the name widely used formerly for species of 
other genera, such as Gracilaria (now usually 
referred to by the Japanese name, ogo). 
Identifying the Hawaiian alga has led to a 
consideration of the differences purported to 
exist between the several species reported in the 
Pacific. Many variants can be found in the mate- 
rial that has been available for this study from 
both the Atlantic and the Pacific, but for the 
present it is felt that the many forms found 
might best be treated as variants of one species. 
Acanthophora spicifera 5 (Vahl) Boergesen 
(1910) is the name for this species having 
priority insofar as we know. 
4 In correspondence, Dr. Papenfuss tells us that 
neither he nor Setchell found this genus in Hawaii, 
and that the only Hawaiian specimens in the Univer- 
sity of California herbarium are duplicates of the 
Hauula collections sent in by Dawson and mentioned 
above. 
5 Basonym —Fucus spiciferus Vahl, 1802. 
Among the most common names 6 considered 
here as having been applied to the taxon A. 
spicifera, as found in the Pacific, is A. orientalis 
J. Agardh (1863). In describing A. orientalis 
as a new species, J. Agardh listed the Marianas 
Islands, of which Guam (13° N., 145° E.) 7 is 
one, as the source of one of the two collections 
he had seen. The other collection was probably 
from Manila Bay ( 14° N., 121° E.) in the 
Philippines. Safford (1905: 30-32) says that in 
the Marianas, the islands Guam, Rota ( 14° N., 
145° E.) and Tinian (15° N., 146° E.) were 
visited by the Freycinet expedition. The material 
of this expedition from these islands is believed 
to be the source of one of the two collections 
Agardh reported. In his text, Safford (1905: 
177 f.) lists A. orientalis from Guam and we 
presume this to be based on the Freycinet 
record, since Safford also says Dumont d’Urville 
collected several new species of algae on Guam. 
We ourselves have seen no specimens from 
Guam, despite a search through the several col- 
lections, now in our possession, which were 
made there by Mr. Ernani Menez in I960. 
Except for the reports from Hawaii, the genus 
is not known to occur in the Pacific east of the 
Marianas other than in the Ponape region, where 
it has been reported by Yamada (1944: 44) as 
A. muscoides (L.) Bory from Ant (7° N., 158° 
E.), an atoll 8 mi. to the southwest of Ponape. 
It is common about the large subcontinental 
or continent-related islands of the far western 
Pacific and, as A. spicifera, according to Womer- 
sley ( 1958) , in northern Australia. The genus is 
reported (Kanda, 1944: 749) from Palau (7° 
N., 134° E.) as A. orientalis. As A. thierii 
Lamx. the genus is recorded from the Admiralty 
Islands (probably 2° S., 147° E.) and Tonga- 
tabu (21° S., 175° W.) by Dickie (1875*: 
238, 235, resp.) and from Torres Straits (10° 
S, 143° E.) by Dickie (1876: 447). Acan- 
thophora is common in the warmer part of the 
Atlantic, and Lamouroux (1813) believed the 
genus to be circumequatorial. 
It seems entirely possible that this species 
6 The only similar species not mentioned otherwise 
here appears to be A. aoki Okamura, 1934. 
7 The approximate latitude and longitude in degrees 
is given for the convenience of those interested in the 
location of the places named. 
