Sandra Lindstrom Affiliate Associate Professor

Affiliations

• Research Associate, University of British Columbia Department of Botany

Specialties

• Marine Benthic Seaweed Flora
• Artificial Culture of Marine Plants

Research Overview

One of the world's most complex coasts extends from Puget Sound, Washington, through British Columbia, and around the coast of Alaska. Repeated glaciation has acted like a species pump, creating a more diverse marine benthic seaweed flora than one would expect in a region so recently covered by ice. Although this area has been studied by phycologists at U.B.C. since the 1950s, only recently have we had the molecular tools to address unequivocally questions of species limits and relationships. These tools have allowed us to recognize species that had previously been confused with other species, and to hypothesize routes of migration of species after the ice melted following the last Ice Age.

A large number of northeast Pacific seaweeds require systematic reinvestigation. In some cases, species boundaries are unclear and need to be resolved. Sometimes, we use the same name as a species with a North Atlantic type: Are our populations really the same species, or have they diverged to become separate species? At other times, we use a different name for a species morphologically similar to a North Atlantic or a northwest Pacific species: should our species be included in synonymy? Taxa especially in need of revision include Chaetomorpha, Lola, Rhizoclonium and various monostromatic green genera, the brown genera Coilodesme, Dictyosiphon and Punctaria, and the red genera Membranoptera, Odonthalia, Phycodrys, Scagelia among others.

Links

• University of British Columbia Department of Botany

Publications

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• mySFOS
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Modified 29 August 2008. Questions or comments to web coordinator.
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