Martin Bua Rønhovde

1 Introduction The kelp Saccharina latissima is distributed in the temperate and Arctic zones of the North Atlantic and North Pacific (Lüning 1991). In Europe, it forms important habitats, providing shelter for a high diversity of associated fauna (Bekkby et al. 2023). Recent phylogenetic analyses provide evidence that S. latissima is composed of four genetically distinct phylogroups, one being the European S. latissima, which has also been found on Svalbard (Neiva et al. 2018).