THE DISSEMINATION OF THE DIVERSITY OF ALGAL SPECIES: FROM THE SCIENCE TO THE PUBLIC

Seaweeds, from a biodiversity and ecological point of view, are important as they dominate the rocky intertidal in most oceans, and in temperate and polar regions cover rock surfaces in the shallow subtidal. Seaweeds are used in many maritime countries as a source of food, for industrial applications and as a fertiliser. The major utilisation of these plants as food is in Asia, particularly Japan, Korea and China, where seaweed cultivation has become a major industry. In most western countries, food and animal consumption is restricted and there has not been any major pressure to develop seaweed cultivation techniques. Industrial utilisation is at present largely confined to extraction for phycolloids and, to a much lesser extent, certain fine biochemicals. Fermentation and pyrolysis are not been carried out on an industrial scale at present but are possible options for the 21st century. The present uses of seaweeds are as human foods, cosmetics, fertilisers, and for the extraction of industrial gums and chemicals. They have the potential to be used as a source of long- and short-chain chemicals with functional food, medicinal and industrial uses. Obviously it is of major importance to taxonomically recognize the species one is dealing with as lookalike species may have less desirable compounds or have a complete different chemical make-up. Besides blue-green algae (Cyanobacteria), euglenophytes, charophytes, diatoms, dinoflagellates and cryptophytes there are about 1200 chlorophytes or green algal, 1750 phaeophytes or brown algal and 6000 rhodophytes or red algal species. One way to disseminate information on this natural resource to the public is through AlgaeBase, a database of information on algae that includes terrestrial, marine and freshwater organisms. Currently AlgaeBase contains 123,508 species and infraspecific names, 6,845 images, 42,225 bibliographic items, and 147,275 distributional records. Besides taxonomic information it includes in many cases industrial and other applications, nutritional aspects and other useful information such as distribution. The usefulness of AlgaeBase as a dissemination tool will be presented together with some personal views on dissemination of information on algae for functional food and other purposes.