Fateme Sargazi - Shahid Beheshti University, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Masoud Sheidai - Shahid Beheshti University, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Hossein Riahi - Shahid Beheshti University, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

Morphological and ecological variations and inter-specific relationships of a red algal genus, Hypnea were investigated in ۱۵ populations belong to ۵ species from Oman Sea coasts. In this study, cluster analyses, principal component analysis and Canonical Correspondence Analysis were done. Statistical analyses indicated that characters such as special branches or branchlets, position of tetrasporange and algae habit are the most important diagnostic characters in intera-genus variation. In general two major clusters were formed. The first major clustercomprised H. boergesenii. Second major clustercontains two subclusters. The first subcluster comprised of H. charoides, H. valentiae and H. musciformis. The second subcluster comprised of H. pannosa. Results showed that variation in the cluster one was explained by average of annual salinity and morphological variation and in cluster two was related to average of annual PH, water temperature and impurities.

Hypnea, morphological variations, tetrasporange, algae habit, pH, temperature, Salinity