Vegetation of eel-grass swards on muddy and sandy substrates of subtropical and tropical seas fringing Atlantic Ocean
Halodulo wrightii-Thalassietea testudinum Rivas-Mart. et al. 1999
Halodulo wrightii-Thalassietea testudinum Rivas-Mart. et al. 1999
hal01 | The Halodulo-Thalassietea is essentially a tropical vegetation unit, though it shows some extrusions into subtropical and sometimes warm temperate seas, such as the northern Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, part of the Gulf of Mexico, seas around Bermuda and the Canary Islands which all under the influence of warm sea currents. The Cymodoceion nodosae is structurally a member of the same class. The main algal component of the Cymodoceion nodosae is Caulerpa prolifera, a species of a large genus mainly distributed in tropical seas. The Cymodoceion nodosae probably emerged as a relict unit after the original Tethys Ocean experienced large-scale geological changes. The genus Cymodocea no longer occurs in America, but it is known there from the Eocene (Lumbert et al. 1984). (C. Den Hartog).