The family Pterocladiophilaceae was originally established by Fan & Papenfuss (1959: 38) to accommodate their newly named genus and species, Pterocladiophila hemisphaerica, a parasite on Pterocladia lucida (R. Brown ex Turner) J. Agardh in New Zealand.

Fredericq & Hommersand (1990a), as an outgrowth of their detailed morphological study of Holmsella pachyderma (Reinsch) Sturch, a parasite algae feeding on Gracilaria and Gracilariopsis in Great Britain and Ireland that had been assigned to the Choreocolacaceae family, noted that it had a lot of similarities among Holmsella Sturch, Gelidiocolax Gardner, and Pterocladiophila.

Moreover, on the basis of certain features of spermatangial initiation, gonimoblast development, and the pattern of concavo-convex divisions of apical and cortical cells, they assigned the family to the Gracilariales.

[5] It has a sole species Pterocladiophila hemisphaerica K.-C.Fan & Papenfuss, that was originally described from New Zealand, and has also been recorded from the Caribbean (Stegenga and Vroman 1986).

[7] They feed on members of the Gelidiaceae family or Gracilaria species of algae, forming small, white to pigmented, hemispherical to verrucose, pustules (raised structure containing necrotic inflammatory cells).