Thorea indica Necchi, E.K. Ganesan

Ganesan, E. K., West, John A. & Jr, Orlando Necchi, 2018, A catalogue and bibliography of non-marine (freshwater and estuarine) Rhodophyta (red algae) of India, Phytotaxa 364 (1), pp. 1-48 : 22

Thorea indica Necchi, E.K. Ganesan & J. A. West

Necchi et al. 2015, p. 268, fig. 2 A–I.

Taxonomic synonym: Thorea siamensis Kumano & Traichaiyaporn sensu Suseela & Toppo 2015, p. 138 , PL.2, figs 11–13.

Distribution in India: Uttar Pradesh (Lucknow, Sai River, Mar, Apr., growing at depth of 1–2.5 ft, attached to submerged stones moderately flowing, clear waters).

Notes: Based on molecular sequences of the rbc L, the barcode region of cox 1, and morphological data, the Indian specimens were described as a new species. The cox 1 barcode sequence had 90.4–90.8% identity with Thorea sp. from Australia and Thorea hispida from Hawaii and China. Based on rbc L sequences, the Indian specimen was positioned in a major clade with high support (>95 bootstrap and 0.95 posterior probability) containing two other species: T. okadae from Japan and T. hispida from the continental USA, Hawaii, the UK, and China. In the light of molecular sequences available for T. indica , it would be worthwhile to study and compare data on records of “ T. hispida ” and “ T. ramosissima ” from other places like Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Ladakh and Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh in India to confirm the number of species present on the Indian sub-continent. Necchi et al. (2015) in their morphological and molecular studies on Thorea plants collected from Sai river in Uttar Pradesh concluded that “the report of T. siamensis by Suseela & Toppo (2015) from the same locality as T. indica has no morphological basis, either in comparison with the original description (Traichaiyaporn et al. 2008) or data from that study”.