Abdullin Sh. R., Afanasev D.F., Mirkin B.M.
Journal of general biology 2017; 78(3): 69-78
The history of syntaxonomy development for marine and freshwater macroalgae and cyanobacterial-algal communities (CACs) is considered. It is shown that the classification development, the same way as classification of higher vascular plants, has taken two steps - dominant and floristic ones. Characteristic features of classification of phototroph community complexes are compared with those of vascular plants. Two examples of syntaxonomy are given - that for macroalgae of Russian shelf of the Black Sea, and for CACs of caves in Russian and Abkhazian territory. It is stressed that CACs have their own specificity due to microscopic size of cyanobacteria and algae, impossibility to describe a sample area, difficulties in determining a CAC species composition, and a high level of continuality. Because of all these circumstances, their classification is more conditional than the syntaxonomy of macroalgae and vascular plants communities. The classification of macroalgae communities takes an intermediate position between syntaxonomies of vascular plants and CACs.
