A research paper classifying the blue-green algae currently blooming extensively in the Yellow Sea as a new subspecies—with Cui Jianjun, a third-year doctoral student in the Graduate School’s Department of Integrated Sciences of the Kuroshio Region, as the lead author and Associate Professor Masanori Hiraoka of the Kuroshio Region Science Division as the corresponding author—has been published in the international journal of algology, *Phycologia*.
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In recent years, while the harvest of green laver collected at the mouth of the Shimanto River in this prefecture has plummeted, massive blooms of green laver have occurred almost every year along the Chinese coast of the Yellow Sea, becoming an environmental problem.Cui et al. revealed that although the Ulva species found in Japan and China are the same species (Ulva prolifera) capable of interbreeding, they differ in morphology and physiological properties, and proposed that the Ulva prolifera causing the blooms be designated as a new subspecies (Ulva prolifera subspecies qingdaoensis).A paper summarizing these findings, titled “Taxonomic reassessment of Ulva prolifera (Ulvophyceae, Chlorophyta) based on specimens from the type locality and Yellow Sea green tides,” was accepted and published in Phycologia, the academic journal of the International Society for Phycology.In addition to Cui and Associate Professor Hiraoka, other researchers from our university who collaborated on this study and are listed as co-authors include Professor Toru Matsui of the Faculty of Science and Engineering, Researcher Yoshito Takano of the Kuroshio Science Division, and third-year doctoral students Alvin Monotilla and Wenrong Zhu from the Graduate School of Integrated Kuroshio Science. Furthermore, the type specimen of the new subspecies is preserved in the specimen collection of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Kochi University.
The article publication page on the Phycologia website is
