Fatty acid profiling of tropical marine macroalgae: An analysis from chemotaxonomic and nutritional perspectives

► FA data successfully segregated diverse assemblage of 100 macroalgal species. ► FA chemotaxonomic groups corroborated with clades inferred from molecular data. ► Green macroalgae were rich in C18 PUFAs, red in C20 PUFAs, brown contained both. ► Long-chain PUFA production correlated with endosymbiotic origin of macroalgae. ► A majority of species examined found to have nutritionally beneficial n6/n3 ratio.