History of the Benthic Marine Algal Flora of Bermuda

Rhododictyon

Rhododictyon bermudensis W.R.Taylor

 
Reports of benthic (attached) marine red, green, and brown algae from Bermuda began to appear in the literature in the last half of the 19th century based upon collections made on just a few voyages, including the "Challenger Expedition," to the islands (Kemp 1857, Rein 1873, Dickie 1874, Hemsley 1884, Murray 1888, 1889). Some early Bermuda specimens were distributed as part of the Algae exsiccatae Americae Borealis (A.A.B., Farlow et al. 1877-1889).

In 1917, Frank Shipley Collins and the Rev. Alpheus Baker Hervey produced the first comprehensive marine flora of the islands and distributed the bulk of their specimens in five fascicles entitled 'The Algae of Bermuda' as part of Phycotheca Boreali-Americana (P.B.-A.,Collins et al. 1912-1917). Collins was an accountant for the Boston Rubber Shoe Company, and in his spare time, an ardent amateur phycologist.

Although his work with marine and freshwater algae was accurate and scholarly, Collins frequently conferred and corresponded with Wm. Gilson Farlow (1844-1919), the prominent cryptogamic botanist at Harvard University who had earlier headed the effort to distribute the A.A.B.(Taylor 1945). Like Collins, Hervey was an amateur phycologist, variously having positions as rector of a Universalist Church and President of St. Lawrence University.

Frank Shipley Collins,
1848-1920

Alpheus Baker Hervey,
1839-1931

A year after Collins & Hervey's Algae of Bermuda appeared, Marshall Avery Howe (1918) contributed the section, 'Algae', in Nathaniel Lord Britton's Flora of Bermuda, but only included "the more common and more conspicuous algae occuring in the islands." For many years, this was the last report of Bermuda marine algae. In 1949, Wm. Randolph Taylor of the University of Michigan first visited Bermuda with his student, Albert J. Bernatowicz (Taylor 1952), and he included their data along with previous collectors in his comprehensive Marine Algae of the Eastern Tropical and Subtropical Coasts of the Americas (1960 ). Later, Taylor & Bernatowicz (1969) produced an annotated list of the most common shallow water macroscopic seaweeds of the Bermudas. Since then, additions to the Bermuda marine flora have been published only sporadically.

Marshall Avery Howe,
1867-1936

William Randolph Taylor,
1895-1990

 Richard B. Searles, now Emeritus Professor of Botany at Duke University, was a student of George F. Papenfuss at UC Berkeley receiving his Ph.D. in 1965. I initiated my graduate studies with Rick at Duke in 1970, finishing my Ph.D. in 1975, then taking up my present post at in the Biology Department at Trinity College, Hartford. After we completed our studies on the seaweeds of the southeastern United States concentrated in the Carolinas, we had two deep-water diving expeditions in Bermuda. Using Scuba and Surface Supplied Air (SSA), we collected seaweeds from 12-50 m depths around the islands on the NOAA funded R/V Seahawk cruises of 1983 and 1985 (Searles & Schneider 1987). These offshore reefs had been neglected phycologically for the most part prior to that time. W.R. Taylor (1952) found the bordering reefs to be "seldom accessible because of the long boat trips involved and the rarity of calm days safe for the arduous work involved." He further stated
Richard Brownlee Searles

Craig W. Schneider (l)
Christopher E. Lane (r)


that "dredging from deep water contributed little to [his Bermuda] study, a regrettable lack from the floristic standpoint." In the only deep water study of note, John Joseph Frederick's dissertation (under Taylor, Univ. Michigan, 1963) compiled a list of the seaweeds found on the Challenger and Argus Banks on the outer shelf, an area unlike most others off Bermuda in its lack of coral pinnacles and therefore, its suitability for dredging. My former undergraduate student, Chris Lane (B.S., Trinity College '99), has joined me on eight Bermuda collecting trips (1999-2008) and during that time frame earned his Ph.D. on macroalgal molecular phylogenetics at the University of New Brunswick in Gary Saunder's seaweed lab. Chris is currently a postdoc in John Archibald's lab at Dalhousie University.

Collectively, since the early offshore work with Rick Searles, we have now published papers including more than 60 new records and new species from offshore, as well as inshore, Bermuda habitats (Saunders et al. 2006; Schneider 2000, 2004; Schneider & Lane 2005, 2007; Schneider & Searles 1997a, 1997b, 1998a, 1998b; Schneider et al. 2005; Searles & Schneider 1987; Wynne & Schneider 1996). Most of these taxa, newly reported for Bermuda, are widespread at least in the warm portions of the Atlantic Ocean, especially the Caribbean Sea. Several other reports, including Antithamnionella bermudica, Asteromenia bermudensis, Chondracanthus saundersii, Crassitegula walsinghamii, Crounia elisiae, Frikkiella searlesii, Griffithsia aestivana and Polysiphonia plectocarpa, represent new species and genera described from island collections. All new records collected prior to 2003 were compiled with all historical reports into a checklist of the Bermuda red, green and brown seaweeds (Schneider 2003).

 

Literature Cited (publication abstracts linked)

 
Craig Wm. Schneider
Department of Biology
Trinity College, Hartford

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