Absconditella amabilis
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| Absconditella amabilis | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Ascomycota |
| Class: | Lecanoromycetes |
| Order: | Ostropales |
| Family: | Stictidaceae |
| Genus: | Absconditella |
| Species: | A. amabilis |
| Binomial name | |
| Absconditella amabilis T.Sprib. (2009) | |
 | |
Absconditella amabilis is a rarely collected bark-dwelling lichen in the family Stictidaceae,[1] first described in 2009 from the spray zone of a waterfall in the inland temperate rainforest of British Columbia. DNA-barcoded material from two humid montane forests in the Czech Republic has since shown that the species has a disjunct boreal–temperate range, persisting in permanently wet microsites on soaked conifer wood or living twigs. It produces minute, cream-coloured fruiting bodies that scarcely break the substrate surface and depends on constant moisture to survive.
The species was described in 2009 by Toby Spribille during a survey of old-growth inland rainforests in British Columbia. It belongs to the ostropalean genus Absconditella, a small group of lichens placed in the family Stictidaceae. Within the genus it is most closely compared with A. lignicola and A. trivialis, but it differs from the former in having markedly smaller fruit-bodies and narrower ascospores, and from the latter in its much shorter spores. The distinguishing combination of traits—a wax-coloured, flat-topped ascoma, a thin non-amyloid hymenium and three-celled spores no more than 15 μm long—clearly separates it from all previously named members of the genus.[2]
The specific epithet amabilis is Latin for "lovely", chosen by the author to reflect the delicate appearance of the tiny fruit-bodies. The holotype was collected from Bear Creek Falls, Glacier National Park, B.C. and is deposited in the herbarium of the University of British Columbia.[2] In the first European report of the species, Vondrák and colleagues in 2024 recorded two Czech specimens whose ITS and mtSSU sequences match the phenotype of the Canadian type material. Because no DNA sequence is yet available from the North American holotype, the authors retained the name A. amabilis for the European material but noted that future sequencing may reveal cryptic divergence from the Canadian population.[3]