Historical survey of marine algal exploration in Sri Lanka and new perspectives

Abstract

There had been neither extensive surveys carried out on the algal diversity nor on their abundance in the recent times. As a result, no attempts have been made to confirm the presence- of species detected in earlier works either. Thus a large gap has been created in the marine algal research in Sri Lanka. A recent project on a grant by the National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka has attempted to study the ecological and anthropogenic impacts on algal diversity and abundance in addition to a taxonomic survey of algaealong the Southwestern coast. As a result of this work, within a span of less than 2% of the coastline, nearly 15 new species of algae and nearly 30% of all recorded species have been identified suggesting, that Sri Lanka’s marine algal flora remains still to be explored. The dearth of an algal herbarium in Sri Lanka is a constraint for algal research. Therefore steps are underway to set up an Algal Herbarium at national level in collaboration with the National Herbarium of Sri Lanka and another supplementary algal herbarium at the University of Ruhuna.