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Floristic Survey o n Marine Macroalgae From The Northern Coastal

Districts Of Andhra Pradesh, India

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1
ARON SANTHOSH KUMAR Y* & PALANISAMY M
1
Botanical Survey of India, Southern Regional Centre, TNAU Campus ,
Coimbatore – 641 003, Tamil Nadu, India

*Email of Corresponding author: santhosharon@gmail.com
Mobile No.: 8667796520 & 9042366978.

ABSTRACT

Marine macroalgae (seaweeds) are the renewable resources of our earth and provide a
substantial contribution to the marine ecosystem. They accomplish a dynamic role in the

broad spectra of science. A total of, 11, 000 taxa have been flagged systematically worldwide
and 865 taxa, belonging to 234 genera are recorded from the various coastal states of India.

The west coast of India is always highly deviated and shows a great resource of seaweeds

than the east coast. The study on the diversity and distribution of seaweeds on the east coast
especially at Andhra Pradesh is infrequent and at the marginal level. Andhra Pradesh has the

second largest coastline (ca 973Km) among the states of India, next to Gujarat. It comprises
various kinds of rocky bodies, which may perform as a suitable substratum for the enormous

diversity of marine macroalgae (Seaweeds). The rocky bodies stretched from Visakhapatnam
to the Srikakulam districts. The crucial floristic reports of the marine macroalgae from

Andhra Pradesh are sporadic, inadequate and infrequently reported from Visakhapatnam

district and remaining coastal areas are yet to be explored. Hence, the present attempt was
subjected to investigate the occurrence of marine macroalgae from Vizianagaram and

Srikakulam, the northern coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh. Total numbers of 22 stations
were located for the survey of marine macroalgae between March 2017 and August 2019. A

sum of 57 species was inventoried, of which 20 species belong to Chlorophyceae, 11 species

to Phaeophyceae and 26 taxa to Rhodophyceae. Among them, class Rhodophyceae (46%) is
the dominant group in species composition followed by Chlorophyceae (35%) and

Phaeophyceae (19%). Also, it confirms the presence of 27 genera which characterized by 20
families of 15 orders reported in the present study. Besides, this, 15 taxa were reported for the

first time from the coastline of Andhra Pradesh and those taxa were treated as new

distributional additional to the algal flora of Andhra Pradesh.

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