Lichenicolous fungi colonising members of the lichen-forming family Teloschistaceae in India
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ISSN: 0075-5974 (print) ISSN: 1874-933X (electronic)
Lichenicolous fungi colonising members of the lichen-forming family Teloschistaceae in India Yogesh Joshi1 , Kapil Bisht2 & Niranjan Suda1
Summary. This paper gives an account of lichenicolous fungi colonising members of the lichen-forming family
Teloschistaceae from India. A new species, Lichenochora ajaysinghii, colonising Caloplaca saxicola is described and a key to so-far-known lichenicolous fungi colonising Indian Teloschistaceae taxa is provided. Key Words. Caloplaca, Himalaya, key, new species, taxonomy.
Introduction The cosmopolitan lichen-forming family Teloschistaceae exhibits considerable morphological and ecological heterogeneity across genera and species groups and currently encompasses 97 genera, although many are not widely accepted (Wijayawardene et al. 2020), but in total with more than 1000 species (Kondratyuk et al. 2017), is divided into four subfamilies: Brownlielloideae, Caloplacoideae, Teloschistoideae and Xanthorioideae (Gaya et al. 2012; Arup et al. 2013; Kondratyuk et al. 2015; Jaklitsch et al. 2016). Like many other mainly lichen-forming families, this family is also a home for lichenicolous fungi. The family has been revised twice in India: 1) Y. Joshi (2008) mentioning 83 species placed in six genera, and recently, 2) Mishra et al. (2019) reported 111 species distributed amongst 35 genera. However, except for a few sporadic publications (Zhurbenko 2013; Joshi et al. 2016, 2018; Joshi 2018) no actual comprehensive record of lichenicolous fungi colonising members of this family is available from India. The aim of this paper is to provide brief information on lichenicolous fungi colonising teloschistacean taxa along with detailed description of a new species, Lichenochora ajaysinghii, and a key to the so-far-known lichenicolous fungi colonising Indian teloschistacean taxa. Further, the records of Cercidospora epicarphinea (Nyl.) Grube & Hafellner on Caloplaca sect. Gasparrinia described earlier by Joshi et al. (2016) probably do not belong to that species and so is excluded from the present study.
Materials and Methods Molecular studies carried out in the Teloschistaceae have resulted in the recognition of 97 genera by some workers; identifying them with a morphotaxonomic approach has become painstaking and tedious and such excessive splitting is out-ofstep with practices in other large lichen-forming families, such as Cladoniaceae. For example, Schumm & Aptroot (2019a, b, c, d) in their book Images of the lichen genus Caloplaca Vol. I – IV, treated Caloplaca Th.Fr. in its broader sense. We have therefore decided to follow those authors and retain the broader concepts of Caloplaca and Xanthoria. However, for reference, the newer names proposed are placed in parentheses. The specimens we studied are deposited in the herbaria of CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute (LWG) which includes the personal herbarium of the late Dr D. D. Awasthi (AWAS) and Lucknow University (LWU), and Kumaun University Almora (ALM) and were examined und
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