SYNOPTIC DESCRIPTION OF THE PHYLUM CYANIDIOPHYTA

EUKARYA> ARCHAEPLASTIDA> RHODOPLANTAE> CYANIDIOPHYTA

CYANIDIOPHYTA LINKS

The description of this phylum comes from Bold and Wynne (1985), Garbary and Gabrielson (1990), Gabrielson et al. (1990), Freshwater et al. (1994), Van den Hoek et al. (1995), Graham and Wilcox (2000), Ciniglia et al. (2004), and Saunders and Hommersand (2004).

I. SYNONYMS: Cyanidiales.

II. NUMBER: >13 species (3 genera).

III. PHYLUM CHARACTERISTICS:

A. Structure and Physiology
- Cell Form: Unicellular.
- Flagella: Absent.
- Basal Bodies: Absent.
- Cell Covering: Covered by a thick proteinaceous cell wall.
- Chloroplasts: Chloroplasts single and cup-shaped; usually bluish due to phycobillins; with chlorophyll a, B-carotene, xanthophylls (text with tooltip) .
- Food Reserves: No pyrenoids; storage product more like glycogen; floridean starch (text with tooltip) in one.
- Mitochondria: Plate-like cristae (text with tooltip) .
- Golgi: Present and associated with endoplasmic reticulum.
- Nucleus: Uninucleate.
- Centrioles: Not present.
- Inclusions and Ejectile Organelles: Not present.

B. Mitosis, Meiosis and Life History
- Mitosis: Closed (text with tooltip) ; cytokinesis by a by a contractile ring of actin; most produce 4 endospores.
- Meiosis: Not known, but most produce 4 endospores (tetrad?).
- Sexual Reproduction and Life History: Not known.

C. Ecology: Mainly found in sea water, usually attached.

LITERATURE CITED

Bold, H. C. and M. J. Wynne. 1985. Introduction to the Algae. 2nd Edition. Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs. NJ.

Cavalier-Smith T. 1981b. Eukaryote kingdoms: seven or nine?. BioSystems 14: 461-461.

Cavalier-Smith, T. 1998a. A revised six-kingdom system of life. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. 73: 203-266. [C]

Ciniglia, C., H. S. Yoon, A. Pollio, G. Pinto, and D. Bhattacharya. 2004. Hidden biodiversity of the extremophilic Cyanidiales red algae. Molecular Ecology. 13:1827-1838.

Doweld, A. 2001. Prosyllabus tracheophytorum. GEOS. Moscow, USSR.

Freshwater D. W., S. Fredericq, B. S. Butler, M. H. Hommersand, and M. W. Chase. 1994. A gene phylogeny of the red algae (Rhodophyta) based on plastid rbcL. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 91: 7281-7281.

Gabrielson, P. W., D. J. Garbary, M. R. Sommerfeld, R. A. Townsend, and P. L. Tyler. 1990. Rhodophyta. In: Margulis, L., J. O. Corliss, M. Melkonian, and D. J. Chapman, eds. 1990. Handbook of the Protoctista; the structure, cultivation, habits and life histories of the eukaryotic microorganisms and their descendants exclusive of animals, plants and fungi. Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Boston. pp. 102-118.

Garbary D. J. and P. W. Gabrielson. 1990. Taxonomy and evolution. In: Cole, K.M. and R. G. Sheath, eds. Biology of the Red Algae. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. pp. 477–498.

Graham, L. E., and L. W. Wilcox. 2000. Algae. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.

Gross, W., I. Heilmann, D. Lenze, and C. Schnarrenberger. 2001. Biogeography of the Cyanidiaceae (Rhodophyta) based on 18S ribosomal RNA sequence data. European Journal of Phycology. 36: 275-275.

Müller K. M., M. C. Oliveira, R. G. Sheath, and D. Bhattacharya. 2001. Ribosomal DNA phylogeny of the Bangiophycidae (Rhodophyta) and the origin of secondary plastids. American Journal of Botany. 88: 1390-1400.

Saunders, G. W. and M. H. Hommersand. 2004. Assessing red algal supraordinal diversity and taxonomy in the context of contemporary systematic data. American Journal of Botany. 91(10): 1494-1507.

Van Den Hoek, C., D. G. Mann, and H. M. Jahns. 1995. Algae, An Introduction to Phycology. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.

Yoon, H. S., J. Hackett, C. Ciniglia, G. Pinto, and D. Bhattacharya. 2004. A molecular timeline for the origin of photosynthetic eukaryotes. Molecular Biology and Evolution. 21: 21 (5): 809-818.

By Jack R. Holt. Last revised: 03/17/2013

SYNOPTIC DESCRIPTION OF THE PHYLUM CYANIDIOPHYTA

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