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Entwisleia bella, photo Luke Saffigna
Entwisleia bella, a beautiful, newly identified red seaweed near Hobart has been named for Tim Entwisle, Chief Executive of the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, GardenDrum blogger and freshwater algae expert.
Entwisleia bella is lot more than just a new species though. It’s in an entire new family, Entwisleiaceae and even a whole new order, Entwisleiales, making it one of the rarest new species finds in Australia. Known only from a small scattered population on rocks south of Hobart, Tim says the red seaweed “shows how much there is still to discover in Australia’s algal flora”.
Photo Luke Saffigna
“Finding Entwisleia is like sighting the very first conifer (pine-like plants), primate, spider or diprotodontids (kangaroo, possum, koala or possum) on Earth,” says Tim, further describing it as “Hobart’s Wollemi Pine”.
One of the authors of the recently published paper revealing the new species, Professor Gerry Kraft from The University of Melbourne, says “This alga is so bizarre and unexpected that when we found it we could scarcely believe our luck. It looks astonishingly like the exclusively freshwater algae Professor Entwisle is a world expert in, and nothing in the oceans is like it. But although we have both male and female plants, as well as all the embryo stages, there are mysteries still to solve. One phase of the life history is completely unknown, and who knows where the alga goes — and what it looks like — during the eight or so months of the year when it completely disappears”.
There is greater biological diversity in what we call algae than in flowering plants, animals and fungi combined. ‘Algae’ are scattered throughout the tree of life, not just on one branch like these other groups.
