Taxonomy of Australian Seagrasses

This chapter lists all Australian seagrass species with their synonyms, which are currently accepted by the IPNI (International Plant Name Index) and the Plant List; the world authority of plant taxonomy. It also briefly reviews taxonomic studies on the Australian seagrasses and includes keys to all Australian seagrass species, with the practical goal of providing botanists with a name for seagrass species based on morphological characteristics. With their limited range of morphological characters, even constructing a morphological key presents some difficulties. The Australian waters are rich in seagrass species (33), with more than one third of the described seagrass species in the world. The majority of Australian temperate species are endemic, while those occurring in Australian tropics are also distributed in the Indo-Pacific region. Where possible we consider the results of molecular phylogenies but at present these are incomplete, and have only focused on a limited range of species.