ANTITHAMNIOID ALGAE (RHODOPHYTA, CERAMIACEAE) NEWLY RECORDED FROM THE AZORES

The genus Scageliopsis Wollaston, presently considered to be endemic to Southern Australia, is reported from the island of Faial in the Azores. A comparison with the type of the genus, S. patens Wollaston, has shown that the Azorean plants probably belong to the same species. They were sterile and grew interwoven with other diminutive turf algae at sublittoral levels down to 41 m. Two other antithamnioid species, Antithamnion diminuatum Wollaston, and Antithamnion pectinatum (Montagne) Brauner in Athanasiadis et Tittley, comb. nov., are also reported for the Azores. Both reports extend their distributional range in the North Atlantic; A. diminuatum was previously known from South Australia and South Africa and A. pectinatum is widely recorded from the Southern Hemisphere, the Western Mediterranean and the North American Atlantic coast (Connecticut).