KEYS TO THE LICHENS OF ITALY - 93) ALECTORIA (with Bryoria and Pseudephebe)
Pier Luigi Nimis
This is a key to all fruticose species of Parmeliaceae with a filamentous thallus without a central, compact medullary strand known to occur in Italy (Nimis 2016), for a total of 13 species. The following genera are included:
Alectoria Ach. a small genus (c. 9 species) with a mainly arctic-alpine to boreal-montane distribution. The genus Gowardia was described for A. nigricans and also includes a newly described closely related taxon by Halonen & al. (2009), but here I follow Lumbsch & Huhndorf (2010) in treating Gowardia as a synonym of Alectoria.
Bryoria Brodo & D. Hawksw. This genus, with c. 50 traditionally recognized species, was monographed for North America by Brodo & Hawksworth (1977). It is the largest segregate from Alectoria s.lat., and has a mainly boreal-montane distribution in both Hemispheres. Although conspicuous and frequently collected, Bryoria still includes many very poorly understood taxa, due to their high morphological and chemical variability. The genus itself seems to be heterogeneous, and might be split into different genera (see e.g. Myllys & al. 2014). Preliminary results from the phylogenetic analysis by Myllys & al. (2016) show that sections Americanae, Divaricatae, Implexae and Tortuosae are monophyletic, while section Bryoria, being polyphyletic, was provisionally divided into two sections. Recently, the genus has received international attention since it has triggered the discovery of unicellular Basidiomycete yeasts in the cortex of Parmeliaceae (Spribille & al. 2016). A revision of Sect. Implexae was published by Velmala & al. (2014), where species such as B. capillaris, B. fuscescens and B. implexa were still considered as distinct. However, the results of a study by Boluda & al. (2019) did not support the monophyly of the 11 currently accepted morphospecies in this section, and suggested their reduction to 4 phylogenetic species, only one of which does occur in Europe. Consequently, these authors considered B. capillaris, B. chalybeiformis, B. implexa, and B. kuemmerleana as synonyms of B. fuscescens, a proposal which I accept here, except provisionally still retaining B. capillaris as a distinct species, due to its chemical and morphological differences.
Pseudephebe M. Choisy a small genus of 2 species with an arctic-alpine, bipolar distribution, distinguished from other alectorioid genera (see Myllys & al. 2014) by the absence of lichen products, the distinctive cortical structure and the lack of pseudocyphellae.
References
Boluda C.G., Rico V.J., Divakar P.K., Nadyeina O., Myllys L., McMullin R.T., Zamora J.C., Scheidegger C., Hawksworth D.L. 2019. Evaluating methodologies for species delimitation: the mismatch between phenotypes and genotypes in lichenized fungi (Bryoria sect. Implexae, Parmeliaceae) Persoonia, 42: 75-100.
Brodo I.M., Hawksworth D.L. 1977. Alectoria and allied genera in North America. Opera Botanica, 42: 1-164.
Halonen P., Myllys M., Velmala S., Hyvarinen H. 2009. Gowardia (Parmeliaceae) - a new alectorioid genus with two species. Bryologist, 112: 138-146.
Lumbsch H.T., Huhndorf S.M. 2010. Outline of Ascomycota. 2009. Fieldiana, Life and Earth Sciences, 1: 1-60.
Myllys L., Velmala S., Lindgren H., Glavich D., Carlberg T., Wang L.S., Goward T. 2014. Taxonomic delimitation of the genera Bryoria and Sulcaria, with a new combination Sulcaria spiralifera introduced. Lichenologist, 46, 6: 737-752.
Myllys L., Pino-Bodas R., Velmala S., Wang L.-S., Goward T. 2016. Infrageneric classification and biogeography of the genus Bryoria based on phylogenetic analyses of six gene loci. IAL 8, Book of Abstracts, Helsinki: 46.
Nimis P.L. 2016. The lichens of Italy. A second annotated catalogue. EUT, Trieste, 740 pp.
Spribille T., Tuovinen V., Resl P., Vanderpool D., Wolinski H., Aime C.M., Schneider K., Stabentheiner E., Toome-Heller M., Thor G., Mayrhofer H., Johannesson H., McCutcheon J.P. 2016. Basidiomycete yeasts in the cortex of ascomycete macrolichens. Science, 353, 6298: 488-492.
Velmala S., Myllys L., Goward T., Holien H., Halonen P. 2014. Taxonomy of Bryoria section Implexae (Parmeliaceae, Lecanoromycetes) in North America and Europe, based on chemical, morphological and molecular data. Ann. Bot. Fenn. 51, 6: 345-371.