Two Turkish scientists have discovered a new species of red algae in Lake Bafa in the Milas district of southwestern Turkey's Muğla, thanks to their ongoing research since 2018 into what they correctly suspected to be a kind of algae new to the region.

The Turkish scientists' research overlapped with a foreign academic's studies on the same species she discovered in the Canary Islands.

Ege University professor Inci Tüney Kızılkaya, from the Department of Biology's Hydrobilogy branch in the Faculty of Science, thought the algae was a different species as a result of the molecular determinations she carried out. So, Kızılkaya continued her studies with professor Ergün Taşkın, a faculty member of the Biology Department of Manisa Celal Bayar University.

Kızılkaya and Taşkın then shared the results of their study with their Spanish colleague, Pilar Diaz-Tapia. In the meantime, it turned out that the Spanish scientist had discovered the same species in the Canary Islands and was preparing for publication.

Receiving the data from Bafa Lake, Diaz-Tapia collaborated with Turkish scientists on the new discovery of red algae. The scientific article prepared in this context was published in the international peer-reviewed journal Phycologia.

Diaz-Tapia prioritized the name her Turkish colleagues had given the red algae since they had discovered it before her.

Thereupon, the algae species was named "Polysiphonia sukatarii," after professor Atakan Sukatar, who retired from Ege University's Hydrobiology branch in 2020.

Kızılkaya told the Anadolu Agency (AA) that she has been working on algae for years, and in this sense, she has carried out projects with her mentor Sukatar during her graduate and doctorate studies.

Kızılkaya stated that she thought the algae she encountered as part of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBITAK) project they carried out in Lake Bafa in 2018 was a different species.

She said that they realized that this algae had not been recorded before in genetic and morphological analyses.

"To confirm this, we contacted our colleague in Spain, Dr. Pilar Diaz-Tapia. She explained that she found the same species in the Canary Islands while she was working, and that she was about to bring it to the publication stage. Then we combined the studies and thought we should make a joint publication," she said.

"However, because we reached out to her and had started the research earlier, she gave the naming priority to us. So, we named the species 'Polysiphonia sukatarii' after our retired teacher."

Emphasizing that Bafa, where the algae species was found, is the largest lake in western Anatolia and rich in terms of biological diversity, Kızılkaya added that the protection status in the region should definitely be increased.