(1895 - 1968)
Arqueólogo y antropólogo. Fue un acucioso investigador en disciplinas científicas tales como la Botánica, la Geología y la Mineralogía, aunque se destacó especialmente en la Arqueología Indo-antillana y en la Antropología Física.
Natural and Exact Sciences
1996 | Cuban freshwater Chlorococcales
Main executives entity:  Center for Algological Research of Cienfuegos
Main author: Augusto Comas González
Summary: Cuban freshwater algae flora is practically unknown. This volume is the first work that gathers floral-taxonomical knowledge on the interesting Chlorococcales group. It is mainly based on the study of material collected in the different freshwater Cuban biotopes, mainly obtained in the western provinces of the country, such as Isla de la Juventud (Isla de Pinos). There are offered dichotomous keys for the taxa incuded in this revision, short botanical descriptions with the main morphological characters, emphasyzing in those that characterize them, informations about ecology, distribution and illustrations, most of them original. In general, taxonomical comments are added, and, when needed, the characteristics of Cuban population are highlighted. There are also included special chapters about Chlorococcales’ biology, systematics, taxonomy, geographic distribution and a brief characterization of the main Cuban aquatic biotopes. In the chapter dedicated to geographic distribution, there are established the floral relationships of Cuban algae’s flora with the different geographic zones, mainly based on works previously published, above all in the results of KOMÁREK & COMAS (1984) and on the most recent data. From this point of view, Cuban freshwater Chlorococcales can be divided in: a) cosmopolitan taxa (60%), where the 47% of taxa are morphologically identical to those from other geographic zones, and the 13% represents taxa that have in Cuba some morphological differences, and can be identified with species of wide distribution; b) pantropical taxa (20%), inside this group, 4% are species only known for tropical America, and the other 4% are species that appear more frequently in the warmest regions; c) taxa only known so far for Cuba (20%). There are related 211 taxa of Chlorococcales that live in Cuban fresh waters, mainly in eutrophic aquatic environments. Scenedesmaceae family is the most represented, and inside of it, troublesome Scenedesmus Meyen genus. Nevertheless, Monoraphidium contortum (Thur.) Kom-Legn., Coelastnm indicum Turn. and Pediastmm tetras (Ehrenb.) Ralfs can be mentioned among the most distributed and frequent species.
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