Batrachospermum bharadwajii J. N. Misra & A. K. Dey

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 : 14

Batrachospermum bharadwajii J. N. Misra & A. K. Dey

Misra & Dey 1959, p. 127, figs 7–11; Balakrishnan & Chaugule 1980c, p. 239; Desikachary et al. 1990, Part II A, p. 88.

Distribution in India: Uttarakhand (Danda lakhan, Dehra Dun, Mar.).

Notes: The original description was given in the Indian language Hindi. Balakrishnan & Chaugule (1980c) provided an English translation but listed it as a nomen nudum. Guiry & Guiry (2017) treated as a currently accepted species but remarked as invalid for lack of a Latin diagnosis. Misra & Dey (1959) mentioned that the Indian species is closely related to B. gallaei Sirodot (current name Atrophycus ater ), but differed in having cystocarp on the external side, rather than on the internal side as in B. gallaei . Desikachary et al. (1990, p. 89) citing Faridi’s (1975) record of “ B. dilleni Bory ” from Pakistan included it as a synonym of “ B. atrum ”, a species not reported, as far as we could verify the records from India. But the point of interest is that both the above binomials are now considered to be taxonomic synyonms of the newly described genus Atrophycus (Rossalignolo et al. 2017) . Balakrishnan & Chaugule (1980c) distinguished the well known and amply distributed “ B. atrum ” as dioecious from the Indian B. bharatwajii , which is monoecious. The unisexual (dioecious) or bisexual (monoecious) nature to differentiate two species are recently shown to be unreliable in some species like “ B. arcuatum ” (= Sheathia arcuata ) ( Ji et al. 2011; see however, Chou & Wang 2006). B. gallaei is included as a synonym of “ B. atrum” (Hudson) Harvey by Kumano (2002, pp. 129, 132 for more details). Until fresh collections from the original type locality and detailed studies are made, the validity of this species will have to remain provisional. The holotype specimen, in any case, is not available anymore and apparently irrecoverably lost.