Suzanne FredericqUniversity of Louisiana at Lafayette | ULL · Department of Biology
Suzanne Fredericq
Ph.D. in Botany
About
296
Publications
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Introduction
Suzanne Fredericq loves marine Red Algae! A macroalgal systematist, she investigates patterns of evolution in red algae worldwide using molecular evidence and comparative vegetative and reproductive morphology. She also focuses on characterizing rhodoliths and their associated macroalgal diversity and microbiota. Since 2010 she has been active in assessing the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the vitality of seaweeds offshore Louisiana.
Additional affiliations
August 1996 - present
Publications
Publications (296)
Rhodoliths are benthic calcium carbonate nodules accreted by crustose coralline red algae which recently have been identified as useful indicators of biomineral changes resulting from global climate change and ocean acidification. This study highlights the discovery that the interior of rhodoliths are marine biodiversity hotspots that function as s...
Interspecific systematics in the red algal order Sporolithales remains problematic. To re-evaluate its species, DNA analyses were performed on historical type material and recently collected specimens assigned to the two genera Sporolithon and Heydrichia. Partial rbcL sequences from the lectotype specimens of Sporolithon ptychoides (the generitype...
Objective:
The body of DNA sequence data lacking taxonomically informative sequence headers is rapidly growing in user and public databases (e.g. sequences lacking identification and contaminants). In the context of systematics studies, sorting such sequence data for taxonomic curation and/or molecular diversity characterization (e.g. crypticism)...
When placed in marine laboratory microcosm tanks, Syringoderma floridana (Syringodermataceae, Syringodermatales) described from Atlantic Florida, grew from the surface of bare rhodoliths collected from 55 to 85 m depth in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. A partial nuclear 28S large subunit rDNA sequenc...
Sporolithon is a non-geniculate, marine taxon that occurs in tropical to subtropical and warm temperate habitats worldwide. On the basis of specimens collected from offshore Louisiana and Florida in the Gulf of Mexico, Sporolithon sinusmexicanum sp. nov. is described. rbcL and psbA sequence analyses showed that S. sinusmexicanum is closely related...
Large masses of pelagic Sargassum occur in the Atlantic Ocean between the latitudes 5◦S and 38◦N. Since 2011, inundations have happened in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and West Africa, affecting biological com- munities and economies. A series of severe weather events in the Azores led to a Sargassum inundation between mid-December 2023 and e...
Specimens found in a tide pool on Santa Maria Island (Azores) were identified in situ as the green alga Penicillus capitatus (Halimedaceae, Bryopsidales). DNA-based analyses of two genetic markers (rbcL and tufA) confirmed the identification and indicated that the Azorean population is closely related to those from the Western Atlantic. P. capitatu...
Up to the present study, only 8.5% of the 522 macroalgal species reported at the Azores have sequences deposited in GenBank and BOLD public repositories. The sequences of four genetic markers (cox1, rbcL, UPA, tufA) were obtained for recently collected samples from two Azorean islands. DNA barcode-assisted identification was conducted on newly gene...
Members of the genus Chondrus are well-known from temperate and cold waters. Chondrus ocellatus Holmes was reported from Hawai‘i Island (19° N latitude) in 1999 as a new record based on vegetative and tetrasporangial characteristics. The first specimens were collected by Setchell in 1900 in Hilo, HI. The presence of a Chondrus species in the subtro...
Non‐native species (NNS) might become invasive and threaten biodiversity, economy and public health. Therefore, it is essential that their invasiveness risk be quantified to support conservation measures.
The Azores, located in the mid‐northern Atlantic, is the crossroad of macroalgal native distributions and also present almost three times the glo...
Non-native species (NNS) represent a threat to biodiversity, and their occurrence and distribution should be periodically updated and made easily available to researchers and policymakers. An updated inventory of macroalgal NNS currently present in the Azores was produced based on published reports. Data concerning the first report and the distribu...
The recently described crustose calcifying red algal species Ramicrusta hawaiiensis, known only from mesophotic depths off Lehua Island, west of Kaua’i Island, was found in shallow benthic reef habitats (3-18 m deep) along the western coast of Hawai’i Island. Molecular and microscopy techniques were used for genetic confirmation and for detailed mo...
Phymatolithon Foslie is one of the most studied and ecologically important genera of crustose coralline algae (CCA) due to their dominant abundance in various marine ecosystems worldwide. The taxonomy of the genus is complex and has been revised and updated many times based on morphological and molecular analyses. We report on a crustose coralline...
In the past, non-geniculate coralline algae in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico have been identified based primarily on comparative morpho-anatomy. Recent studies employing DNA sequencing techniques combined with morpho-anatomical studies using SEM have revealed a wealth of previously undocumented diversity of rhodolith-forming non-geniculate corall...
The marine red algal order Halymeniales currently includes two families, the Halymeniaceae and Tsengiaceae, and consist of 38 genera and about 358 species. Phylogenetic analyses on specific taxa of the order are common, but not comprehensive, leaving the many intra-ordinal relationships within the Halymeniales unresolved. To reassess the phylogeny...
Non‐geniculate coralline algae are difficult to identify based solely on morpho‐anatomy. To address the systematics of several taxonomically challenging taxa, we analyzed DNA sequences of a short portion (118‐296 base pairs) of the 3’ end of the rbcL gene from three type specimens. The analyses revealed that Harveylithon munitum (basionym: Lithophy...
Twenty-one samples belonging to species of Spyridia Harvey with uncinate (= hook-shaped) spines on determinate lateral branches were investigated for their morphology with a focus on the structure of determinate branches, and for comparative chloroplast-encoded rbcL and nuclear LSU rDNA sequence analysis to elucidate their taxonomy and phylogeny. C...
Routine DNA barcoding with the chloroplast gene tufA identified novel records of an unknown and denuded (i.e. lacking branchlets) Caulerpa species previously reported from the Florida Middle Grounds. tufA barcoding not only confirmed the matching molecular identity of this taxon with several newly collected denuded specimens from shallow habitats o...
The classification of Cystoclonium obtusangulum has been questioned since the species was first described by Hooker and Harvey as Gracilaria? obtusangula. The objective of this study was to provide the first comprehensive taxonomic analysis of Cystoclonium obtusangulum, based on DNA sequences coupled with morphological observations made on syntype...
This study builds on recent treatments of the marine red algal family Gracilariaceae (Gracilariales) focusing in detail on Hydropuntia and Crassiphycus. Species in these two genera often present identification problems due to high levels of morphologial similarity among genetically distinct species, and high levels of phenotypic plasticity, leading...
The AdjustaDepth TechnoEconomic Analysis was prepared by Mark E. Capron PE, Co-PI, under the direction of Kelly Lucas, PhD, PI and submitted April 3, 2019 to U.S. Department of Energy ARPA-E under Phase 1 Contract DE-AR0000916. Its 33 tabs present the cost and yield projections for growing Gracilaria tikvahiae in the Gulf of Mexico. It can be adapt...
DNA sequence analysis of plastid-encoded psbA and UPA, mitochondrion-encoded COI, and nuclear-encoded LSU rDNA of rhodolith-forming crustose coralline algal specimens from the northwestern Gulf of Mexico reveals that Mesophyllum erubescens (Foslie) Me. Lemoine is present in mesophotic rhodolith beds offshore Louisiana and Texas at 39–57 m depth. Mo...
Endolithic, red unicells residing in the interior of Lithothamnion rhodoliths, collected offshore the NW Gulf of Mexico in mesophotic rhodolith beds at ∼54–55 m depth and maintained in closed microcosms, were used to establish cultures following their isolation. These endolithic unicells subsequently developed into amorphous blobs of palmelloid cel...
The gelatinous, calciferous red alga Renouxia antillana was described in 1995 based on material from Guadeloupe, French West Indies, and accommodated in a new family and order (Rhodogorgonaceae, Rhodogorgonales) along with the genus Rhodogorgon from Belize and Caribbean Panama. For more than 20 years, Renouxia has remained monotypic, with rare repo...
Background:
The MinION Access Program (MAP, 2014-2016) allowed selected users to test the prospects of long nanopore reads for diverse organisms and applications through the rapid development of improving chemistries. In 2014, faced with a fragmented Illumina assembly for the chloroplast genome of the green algal holobiont Caulerpa ashmeadii, we a...
DNA sequence analysis of plastid-encoded psbA and rbcL loci, and nuclear-encoded LSU rDNA of rhodolith-forming specimens of Sporolithales from Brazil and the northwestern Gulf of Mexico reveal that they belong to an unnamed species of Sporolithon (Sporolithaceae). Sporolithon amadoi sp. nov. is morpho-anatomically characterized by a vegetative thal...
Studies on the population structure of common widespread macroalgae in the Gulf of Mexico (GoMx) are scarce, and this knowledge gap limits our understanding on how disturbances affect the genetic diversity of macroalgae in this basin. The latter is due to the lack of a baseline that can be compared with allele frequency surveys conducted after a ma...
Macroalgae in mesophotic coral ecosystems are generally understudied compared to corals and fishes yet may be more abundant than coral-dominated reefs given their lower depth limits (> 200 m) and ability to grow over soft and hard bottom habitats. These assemblages are abundant and diverse globally, with changing species composition with increasing...
AdjustaDepth Project was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy to design an artificial reef system for growing and harvesting seaweed for advanced sustainable biofuels. The team discovered that the system grows more seaweed per hectare when it is part of a complete ecosystem with shellfish, finfish, and...
Lobophora is a common tropical to temperate genus of brown algae found in a plethora of habitats including shallow and deep‐water coral reefs, rocky shores, mangroves, seagrass beds and rhodoliths beds. Recent molecular studies have revealed that Lobophora species diversity has been severely underestimated. Current estimates of the species numbers...
Rhodoliths are the main hard substrata for the attachment of benthic macroalgae in the NW Gulf of Mexico rubble habitats that are associated with salt domes, unique deep bank habitats at ~50–90 m depth on the continental shelf offshore Louisiana and Texas. With the advent of additional sequencing technologies, methodologies for biodiversity assessm...
An updated list of the names of the marine macroalgae of Cabo Verde, an archipelago of
ten volcanic islands in the central Atlantic Ocean, is presented based on existing reports,
and includes the addition of 36 species. The checklist comprises a total of 372 species
names, of which 68 are brown algae (Ochrophyta), 238 are red algae (Rhodophyta) and...
The Gracilariales is a red macroalgal order and the main global source of the economically important agar, a marine phycocolloid. Independent comparative morphological and molecular phylogenetic studies over the last 20 years have revealed the existence of seven major clades recognizable as distinct genera. Of these major clades only four free-livi...
Mitochondria and plastids are generally uniparentally inherited and have a conserved gene content over hundreds of millions of years, which makes them potentially useful phylogenetic markers. Organelle single gene-based trees have long been the basis for elucidating inter-species relationships that inform taxonomy. More recently, high-throughput ge...
The US Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) MacroAlgae Research Inspiring Novel Energy Research (MARINER) program is encouraging technologies for the sustainable harvest of large funding research of macroalgae for biofuels at less than $80 per dry metric ton (DMT). The Ocean Forests team, led by the University of S...
Genera in the Rhodymeniaceae Harvey that have a hollow thallus lacking diaphragms have been placed in Chrysymenia J. Agardh 1842 (including Gloiosaccion Harvey 1859), Botryocladia (J. Agardh) Kylin 1931, Irvinea Guiry in Saunders et al. 1999, and Cresia C. Lozada-Troche, D.L. Ballantine & H. Ruíz 2010. Chrysymenia has traditionally been defined by...
The tropical alga previously recognized as Gibsmithia hawaiiensis (Dumontiaceae, Rhodophyta) was recently suggested to represent a complex of species distributed throughout the Indo-Pacific Ocean and characterized by a peculiar combination of hairy (pilose) gelatinous lobes growing on cartilaginous stalks. Phylogenetic reconstructions based on thre...
The tropical to warm-temperate marine brown macroalgal genus Lobophora (Dictyotales, Phaeophyceae) recently drew attention because of its striking regional diversity. In this study we reassess Lobophora global species diversity, and species distributions, and explore how historical factors have shaped current diversity patterns. We applied a series...
Background
Correctly identifying organisms is key to most biological research, and is especially critical in areas of biodiversity and conservation. Yet it remains one of the greatest challenges when studying all but the few well-established model systems. The challenge is in part due to the fact that most species have yet to be described, vanishin...
In the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico (NWGMx), subtidal rhodolith beds offshore Louisiana at 45–80 m depth harbor a diverse community of uncharacterized non-geniculate coralline algae including both biogenic and autogenic rhodoliths and other encrusting taxa. Identifying specimens to their correct genus and species is an ongoing process because many a...
Gibsmithia hawaiiensis is a peculiar red alga characterized by furry gelatinous lobes arising from a cartilaginous stalk. The species has been recorded from tropical reef systems throughout the Indo-Pacific. A multilocus phylogeny (UPA, rbcL, COI-5P) of 36 specimens collected throughout the species distribution range, showed high genetic diversity...
Red algae are a phylum of about 7100 mostly marine, unicellular and multicellular photosynthetic eukaryotes that belong to the Supergroup Plantae. Multicellular taxa consist exclusively of a filamentous construction lacking true tissues despite their often superficially complex plant body. This group is unique in the Tree of Life in lacking both fl...
The existence of massive cryptic diversity in algae makes linking DNA-based lineages to existing taxa exceedingly difficult. A better integration of historical collections into modern taxonomic research is therefore highly desirable. Using the brown algal genus Lobophora as a test case, we explore the feasibility of linking taxonomic names to clade...
The green plants (Viridiplantae) are an ancient group of eukaryotes comprising two main clades: the Chlorophyta, which includes a wide diversity of green algae, and the Streptophyta, which consists of freshwater green algae and the land plants. The early-diverging lineages of the Viridiplantae comprise unicellular algae, and multicellularity has ev...
New empirical and quantitative data in the study of calcium carbonate biomineralization and an expanded coralline psbA framework for phylomineralogy is provided for crustose coralline red algae. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS) pinpointed the exact location of calcium carbonate crystals within overgrow...