Morphological Diversity of Gracilaria blodgettii Harvey 1853 (Gracilariaceae, Rhodophyta) from Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo.

Ruhana Hassan,Amir Shah Ruddin Md Sah,Muhammad Nur Arif Othman,Mohd Nasarudin Harith

doi:10.1155/2019/3430968

Ruhana Hassan, Amir Shah Ruddin Md Sah + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/3430968

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Abstract

Gracilaria red algae are notable for their economic importance as agrophytes, sold as salad vegetable, and used as the base for selected food and nonalcoholic beverages. A wild population of Gracilaria exists in coastal areas of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, but there is only limited knowledge on species diversity and its abundance leaving the untapped economic potential of this resource. This study was carried out to determine diversity of wild Gracilaria populations in Lawas, Santubong, and Asajaya, Sarawak, using the combination of morphological character examination and 5′ region of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase 1 (CO1-5P) gene analysis. Identification of the species using morphological characters revealed three species, namely, Gracilaria changii, G. blodgettii, and G. arcuata, had been collected from the sampling sites. However, based on 672 bp CO1-5P gene sequence analysis, all the three species were identified as G. blodgettii; besides, low genetic divergence values (0.17%–0.34%) were scored between samples in this study with the same species in GenBank. In the phylogenetic trees, all samples in this study group together with other G. blodgettii have high bootstrap values; thus, this species is monophyletic. This study implies that species identification of Gracilaria and other seagrass taxa which have a phenotypic plasticity problem should include the CO1-5P gene analysis as it is a reliable gene marker for species diversity assessment.

Highlights

Genus Gracilaria Greville consists of more than 170 species worldwide, distributed from tropical to temperate waters, covering from intertidal to subtidal zones [1,2,3]
20 species of Gracilaria had been identified in Malaysia [10], where half of them were found in Sarawak, namely, G. arcuata Zanardini, G. articulata Chang & Xia, G
The samples were cleaned using distilled water to remove the epiphytes, aquatic organisms, and sand particles which may trap within the thalli. en, each thallus was kept separately in a labelled plastic bag and stored in the −20°C freezer until further analysis. e DNA extraction of Gracilaria samples was done following the standard cetyl-trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) protocol by Doyle and Doyle [28], followed by 1% agarose gel electrophoresis (AGE)

Summary

Introduction

Genus Gracilaria Greville consists of more than 170 species worldwide, distributed from tropical to temperate waters, covering from intertidal to subtidal zones [1,2,3]. It can be found from Arctic Ocean to tropical seas of the northern hemisphere and countries of Southeast Asian regions such as Malaysia, Indonesia, ailand, Vietnam, Singapore, and Philippines [4, 5]. 20 species of Gracilaria had been identified in Malaysia [10], where half of them were found in Sarawak, namely, G. arcuata Zanardini, G. articulata Chang & Xia, G. changii Xia & Abbott, G. coronopifolia J. In Asajaya, Sarawak, Gracilaria thalli were found attached on the roots of mangrove trees [13]

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