Identity of the Qingdao algal bloompre_532 147..151

In early July 2008, news agencies worldwide reported on a vast algal bloom that was threatening the upcom-ing Olympic sailing events in Qingdao, China. The identity of the culpable alga, however, remained undis-cussed. We have identified the alga that caused the bloom by means of morphological and molecular data, including sequence data of the plastid encoded large subunit ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase gene (rbcL) and the nuclear encoded rDNA internal tran-scribed spacer (ITS) region. The bloom-forming alga falls within the morphological limits of the green seaweed Ulva prolifera O.F. Müller (‘Enteromorpha pro-lifera (O.F. Müller) J. Agardh’) but our phylogenetic analyses show that it forms a clade with representatives of the Ulva linza-procera-prolifera (LPP) complex. The Chinese rbcL sequences are identical to those of speci