Whats you favorite marine plant?

heartforalion

New member
Hi Guys~
I'm a new at this so forgive me. I recieved some green algae with my live rock 2 months ago. I've been reading a ton about everything. I really like Marine plants. We have big kelp forests off my coast and I love them. So, I would love to here what your favorite plants are, which are easy to keep, which ones are good to keep in the reef. Thankyou :)
 
Well most marine plants are actually algae. The shaving bush is my fav of the plants but I here it's hard to keep.

As far as macroalgae, for display purpose I have to say Feather Caulerpa.

For export prefer spaghetti. It's tough and won't go sexual, I use it for a filter media in my sump!
 
Macro algae is synonmous with marine plants typically. Most Pychologist, like myself refer to kelps and seaweeds as marine plants as these are very advance marine autotrophes, macroscopic size with often convergent traits of those found on land plants.
Macrophyte is perhaps a better word but most experts will refer to marine macro algae as marine plants as a general word and then if you want to be _specific and precise_, we use genus/species and then a common name thereafter.

Perhaps we just like calling them marine plants:)
Most authors, such Littler& Littler, Graham and Loban will talk about them this way. Freshwater folks often distingush with the term "macrophyte" as a general big green leafy thing in the water.

The term "algae" spans 2 Domains and 5-6 Kingdoms depenending of how up to date your references might be and how willing you are to argue Cyanobacteria/Blue green algae are called algae(again, like marine plants, Phycologist really are the ones that do the research on them, named them, these act more like algae than bacteria in many ways and are radically different from all other bacteria) but the eukaryotic "algae" are in at least 5 kingdoms pretty securely.

There are arguments for both sides about calling algae this or that, I will defer to the wiser Phycologist by saying "it is called whatever by the person that B****es the loudest."

Now that's precision:)

For inside reef tanks, a number of Halimeda sp tends to work well and is slower growing.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 
Excuse me for hijacking the thread, but Tom, what system of taxonomy are you using? I'm familiar with the most-accepted 5-kingdom (Fungi, Plantae, Animalia, Monera, Protista), but you say marine plants span 5 kingdoms... What's this thing about domains and such?
-Will
 
You are a few years + behind:)

Dinoflagellata is in the Kingdom Aveloata
Euglena is the Kingdom Euglenozoa
Phaeophyta, Bacillariophyta and Chrysophyta are in the Kingdom Stramenoplia
Rhodophyta is in the Kingdom Rhodophyta
Most green algae are in Chlorophyta which has two Phyla, Chlorophyta and Charophyta

Some are considering moving the green algae over to Plantae.

Almost any intro Bio text has these newer Kingdom listings(eg Campbell 6th edition etc).

Yes, I learned the old way but these above names are the only way to keep credit on the exams.

There are three domains above Kingdom:
Archaea
Bacteria
Eukarya

The Bacteria domain has what was called Cyanophyta, now Cyanobacteria. Salt water has many diverse groups of these Cyanobacteria, sometimes referred to as Blue Green algae(BGA).
These act much more both physiologically and ecologically as eukaryotic algae in their roles in aquatic ecosysterms and are radically different in many ways to all other bacteria.

While everyone does strive to have the most up to date names, most everyone knows what you are talking about if you say BGA, marine plants etc.

More important are the structures and lineages that divides these groups into their prospective clades.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 
Plantbrain said:
You are a few years + behind:)

Hehe, me and the rest of the American highschool system :p

Thanks for the quick lesson, it's quite interesting. What is the rest of the classification after kingdom? Is it phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, or did this change as well? Also (while I've got an expert here hehe), are plants still classified into groups rather than phyla, and (you may or may now know this, just curious), why were they put in groups instead of phyla anyway?
-Will
 
The names below did not change, still the same.

Not to dodge or be gruff: I believe it would be more appropriate and easier for you to simply get the Campbell book at the local library. Or do a search on yahoo/google etc than to get into this here.
It's too much for posting here and it's too off topic.
There are many college bio sites filled with this stuff.


Regards,
Tom Barr
 
Greetings All !

What Plantbrain is talking about is a discipline of taxonomy/systematics commonly referred to as "cladistics." This discipline utilizes a system of "phylogenetic nomenclature", as contrasted to the classical (Linnean) system of "binomial nomenclature (Kingdom - Phylum - Class - ...)".

I'm not sure that any of us can be "officially" behind the times until after the inaugural meeting of the International Society for Phylogenetic Nomenclature (ISPN), scheduled for July 6 - 9, 2004, in Paris. Afterall, the PhyloCode (the formal set of rules governing phylogenetic nomenclature) will not "officially" go into operation for a few years (see http://ohiou.edu/phylocode/).

Make no mistake, all you (including me)kingdom,phylum,class,order,family,genus,species folks ... the clade is coming. Phylogenetic nomenclature is based (primarily) upon genetic, as opposed to morphological/ecological, relationships. This is SERIOUS biological systematics mojo ... .

For general/simple information of cladistics, you can start at http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladistics, or just type in "cladistics" into any decent search engine.

FYI,
GDW
 
PhyloCode Link Not Functioning

PhyloCode Link Not Functioning

Greetings All !

This is the text version of what the dysfunctional link that I provided:

Paris Meeting
(July 6-9, 2004)
Announcement
PDF Version
Word Version




The PhyloCode is a formal set of rules governing phylogenetic nomenclature. It is designed to name the parts of the tree of life by explicit reference to phylogeny. The PhyloCode will go into operation in a few years, but the exact date has not yet been determined. It is designed so that it may be used concurrently with the existing codes based on rank-based nomenclature (ICBN, ICZN, etc.). We anticipate that many people whose research concerns phylogeny will find phylogenetic nomenclature advantageous.
The PhyloCode grew out of a workshop at Harvard University in August 1998, where decisions were made about its scope and content. Many of the workshop participants, together with several other people who subsequently joined the project, have served as an advisory group (see the PhyloCode preface for a list of the people involved). In April 2000, a draft was made public on this web site and comments were solicited from the scientific community. All comments were forwarded to the advisory group, and many of them elicited discussion.

A second workshop was held at Yale University in July 2002, at which some modifications were made in the rules and recommendations of the PhyloCode. An important decision made at the Yale workshop is that the rules governing clade names and those governing species names will be published in separate documents, and the timing of implementation of the two documents will be independent. The rules for clade names will almost certainly be implemented before those for species names because the latter have not yet been drafted. Only clade names are covered by the current version of the PhyloCode. As a result, the examples in the current version use binomials governed by the rank-based codes when species names are cited in the phylogenetic definitions of clade names.

The first international meeting on phylogenetic nomenclature is scheduled for July 6-9, 2004 in Paris. A detailed circular can be downloaded via a link on the lefthand side of this page. Questions should be addressed to the Chair of the Organizing Committee, Michel Laurin (laurin@ccr.jussieu.fr). This meeting is particularly important for two reasons: 1) In a series of contributed talks, new and converted clade names will be applied in a variety of different taxonomic groups in accordance with the PhyloCode. Papers based on these talks will then be published as a volume whose publication date will be designated as the starting date for the PhyloCode. 2) The 2004 symposium will also serve as the inaugural meeting of the International Society for Phylogenetic Nomenclature (ISPN). At this meeting, a council and officers will be elected and committees will be established, including the Committee on Phylogenetic Nomenclature, the responsibilities of which are explained in Art. 21. We hope that many phylogenetic systematists will participate in this historic meeting.

Please send your comments on any aspect of the PhyloCode to phylocode@www.ohiou.edu.

If you would like to join an internet discussion group focusing on phylogenetic nomenclature, send a message to listserv@ohiou.edu. The message should read: "subscribe PhyloCode" (without the quotation marks). Do not include anything else in the message. In a short time, you should receive an automatic reply explaining how to send messages to the discussion group.


Page created on April 9, 2000. Last modified on October 13, 2003.
Web site maintained by Philip Cantino.
Web design by Andrew Cantino.
Logo by Rick Ree.


Sorry about that,
GDW


We are grateful to Richard Piccard, Academic Technology Manager in Computer Services at Ohio University, for technical support, and to Andy Anderson for preparing the downloadable MS-Word and PDF files for the April 2000 draft.
 
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