Technical Information

About Algae Types

Algae commonly grow in any habitat where water or moisture is found. Habitats include fresh and salt water bodies, hot springs, ice, air and in or on organisms and substrate. They form communities, living with many other different species of algae, plankton and zoo plankton. The presence of these communities can is a good indicator of the health and integrity of the ecosystem, because they form from the base of most aquatic food chains.

They are very simple organisms with no vascular tissue. The only exception is brown algae, which has a higher degree of organ differentiation.
They have naked reproductive structures, i.e. there is no protective layer of cells around reproductive structures.
They are photoautotrophic i.e. they produce their own food materials through photosynthesis by using sunlight, water and CO2. There are some exceptions, for example certain species of Euglena, which do not have any chloroplasts, therefore they ingest other organism.
In spite of the fact, that not all algae are classified as plants, they contain chlorophyll similarly to plants.

Algae are classified into four main groups: Blue greens, greens, diatoms and flagellates.

The starting point for algae identification is outlined as a two-step approach:

In the field, using the three senses of sight, smell and touch will help give the user a primary assessment of which algal group or genera the algae might belong to;
In the lab, where the identification of algae is validated using a compound microscope. Since there exist many diverse species within each genus of algae and many looking very similar macroscopically, verification of algae must be done using a microscope.