Chemotaxonomy of marine organisms: the childhood of a new discipline

Abstract

Chemotaxonomy of marine organism originated in the second half of this century. Untill now, only few remarquahle results werw obtained because too much emphasis was given to the search of finger prints and because a presence/absence criterion was used for comparison purposes. In this work, alternative methodologies are briefly commented and are illustrated with results from the study of brown algae of the genus Dictyota (Phaeophyta, Dictyotales).