''Caulerpa sertularioides'', also known as green feather algae, is a species of seaweed in the '' Caulerpaceae'' family found in warm water environments.

Description

The seaweed has a pale to dark-green thallus that typically grows to outward to around . It has feather-like fronds that arise from a common stolon. Each of the fronds is upright and branched. The oppositely arranged branchlets are cylindrical to needle-shaped with upcurved tips with a blunt point at the end. Each branchlet has a length of and is attached to a cylindrical axis in the middle with a diameter of . Each axis connects each frond to a creeping

stolon In biology, stolons (from Latin '' stolō'', genitive ''stolōnis'' – "branch"), also known as runners, are horizontal connections between organisms. They may be part of the organism, or of its skeleton; typically, animal stolons are external s ...

with a diameter of and a length of up to . Stolons are branched out to slim points and rhizoids then form from bottom surface these fork and penetrate the sandy substrate firmly anchoring the seaweed to the seafloor.

Taxonomy

The species was first formally described by the botanist and taxonomist

Marshall Avery Howe Marshall Avery Howe (1867-1936) was an American botanist, taxonomist, morphologist, curator and the third director of the New York Botanical Garden.Makers of American Botany, Harry Baker Humphrey, Ronald Press Company, Library of Congress Card Nu ...

in 1905 as part of the work ''Phycological studies - II. New Chlorophyceae, new Rhodophyceae and miscellaneous notes'' as published in the ''Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club''. The

basionym In the scientific name of organisms, basionym or basyonym means the original name on which a new name is based; the author citation of the new name should include the authors of the basionym in parentheses. The term "basionym" is used in both botan ...

is ''Fucus sertularioides'' as described by Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin in 1768.

Distribution

The species is found widely through tropical waters. In the United States it is found from North Carolina to Florida. It is also found throughout the Caribbean around Bermuda, Bahamas, Greater and Lesser Antilles and in the Gulf of Mexico and in the southern Atlantic Ocean to Brazil (Taylor 1979). It is also found in the Pacific Ocean along the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines and Palau. In Western Australia, it is found along the coast in the

Kimberley Kimberly or Kimberley may refer to: Places and historical events Australia * Kimberley (Western Australia) ** Roman Catholic Diocese of Kimberley * Kimberley Warm Springs, Tasmania * Kimberley, Tasmania a small town * County of Kimberley, a ...

region extending south to the

Gascoyne The Gascoyne region is one of the nine administrative regions of Western Australia. It is located in the northwest of Western Australia, and consists of the local government areas of Carnarvon, Exmouth, Shark Bay and Upper Gascoyne. The Ga ...

. The species is usually part of coastal and estuarine environments where it grows in sandy areas, as seagrass beds or on and around mangrove roots. It is mostly found as a shallow-water specimen to depths of around although sparse individuals have been taken from depths of up to .

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q41804902 sertularioides Species described in 1905