Some Interesting Freshwater Red Algae from Southern India

India's biodiversity is remarkable, as it is one of the 17 mega-diverse countries of the world. India occupies only 2.4% of the world's land area, but it harbours 7-8% of all recorded species, including many endemic ones. India's biodiversity is influenced by its diverse landforms, climates and habitats, ranging from tropical to temperate, and from alpine to desert. India holds a rich diversity of waterbodies, both natural and man-made, that serve various ecological and socio economic functions. Some of the major waterbodies in India are rivers, lakes, lagoons, estuaries, gulfs, straits and canals. India is surrounded by four oceans on different sides: the Lakshadweep Sea in the southwest, the Arabian Sea in the west, the Bay of Bengal in the east and the Indian Ocean in the south. Algae are a diverse group of photosynthetic organisms which love to grow in aquatic habitats. Since India has great diversity in aquatic bodies it is obvious to have rich algal diversity. There are several groups of algae were reported from India by various researchers. In this book we are going to discuss a single group called Freshwater Red Algae (FWRA) belongs to the phylum Rhodophyta. Members of Rhodophyta are largely studied in marine environments least number of studies only focused on their freshwater members. In this study, we have discussed some freshwater red algal members collected from southern India. We believe this book remains a solid guide to identifying freshwater red algae from India. This book contains the description of thirty-four species of fresh water red algae collected from southern India with images and geographic locations, among these fourteen species were new to science. Not only that this book contains descriptions and images of several ecophenes of Compsopogon caeruleus species. This is one of the largest collections of freshwater red algae from India.  Hence this book will be very useful to the research community.