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Recent molecular phylogenetic studies of the lichen family Acarosporaceae
have shown that genera in this group, as traditionally defined, are not
monophyletic and that changes are required to accommodate the discovery
that taxa with disparate thallus morphologies are often closely related.
Here we use phylogenetic inferences of mtSSU sequence data to show that
seven species (Acarospora dispersa, A. rhizobola, A. terricola,
Melanophloea americana, M. coreana, M. montana and Thelocarpella
gordensis), currently placed in four genera and three families, and with
divergent thallus morphologies, all belong to a single strongly supported
clade within the Acarosporaceae. Members of the clade all have apothecia
with an incurving parathecium which forms globose apothecia in which the
apothecial disc is less than or equal to half the width of the equatorial
diameter of the hymenium, and long bacilliform conidia. We transfer the
species to Trimmatothelopsis, the oldest generic epithet available for the
group and provide a taxonomic treatment that includes analysis of the
published literature pertaining to these taxa, a key to species and
descriptions of the four taxa that occur in North America. Rhizohyphal
bundles are reported from two terricolous species, T. terricola and T.
rhizobola.
236 views reported since publication in 2017.