Evidence for two independent lineages of Griffithsia (Ceramiaceae, Rhodophyta) based on plastid protein-coding psaA, psbA, and rbcL gene sequences.

The ceramiaceous red algal genus Griffithsia has characteristic large vegetative cells visible to the unaided eye and thousands of nuclei in a single cell at maturity. Its members often occur intertidally along temperate to tropical coasts. Although previous morphological studies indicated that Griffithsia is subdivided into four groups, there is no molecular phylogeny for the genus. We present the multigene phylogeny of the genus based on plastid protein-coding psaA, psbA, and rbcL genes from ten samples of eight Griffithsia species, eight samples of five putative relatives, such as Anotrichium and Halurus, and three outgroup taxa. Saturation plots for each of the three datasets showed no evidence of saturation at any codon position. The partition homogeneity test indicated that none of the individual datasets resulted in significantly incongruent trees. All the analyses of individual and concatenated datasets separated Griffithsia into two well-defined lineages: Lineage 1 was composed of Griffithsia corallinoides, Griffithsia pacifica, and Griffithsia tomo-yamadae, while lineage 2 encompassed Griffithsia antarctica, Griffithsia japonica, Griffithsia teges, Griffithsia traversii, and Griffithsia sp. Our results support the monophyly of the four Anotrichium species and cast a question on the autonomy of Halurus. The monophyly of the tribe Griffithsieae is well resolved, although interrelationships among Griffithsia, Anotrichium, and Halurus were unclear. Our study indicates that the psaA and psbA genes are powerful new tools for the genus-level phylogeny of red algal groups, such as Griffithsia. This is the first report on the multigene phylogeny of the Ceramiales algae based on three protein-coding plastid genes.