Arctocetraria
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Arctocetraria | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Arctocetraria andrejevii | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Ascomycota |
| Class: | Lecanoromycetes |
| Order: | Lecanorales |
| Family: | Parmeliaceae |
| Genus: | Arctocetraria Kärnefelt & A.Thell (1993) |
| Type species | |
| Arctocetraria andrejevii (Oxner) Kärnefelt & A.Thell (1993) | |
| Species | |
Arctocetraria is a genus of fruticose lichens in the family Parmeliaceae. It has three species.[1]
The genus Arctocetraria was circumscribed by the lichenologists Ingvar Kärnefelt and Arne Thell in 1993, who separated it from the older genus Cetraria based on distinctive reproductive features. Arctocetraria andrejevii was designated as the type species. The creation of this new genus reflected an improved understanding of evolutionary relationships among cetrarioid lichens, as Arctocetraria species share unique characteristics that set them apart from true Cetraria species, particularly in their spore-producing structures and chemical composition.[2]
The genus originally included two species (A. andrejevii and A. nigricascens), both of which were previously classified under Cetraria but were found to form their own distinct evolutionary lineage.[2] A third species was added to the genus in 2007.[3]
In 2017, Pradeep Divakar and colleagues used a then-recently developed "temporal phylogenetic" approach to identify temporal bands for specific taxonomic ranks in the family Parmeliaceae, suggesting that groups of species that diverged within the time window of 29.45–32.55 million years ago represent genera. They proposed to synonymize Arctocetraria with Nephromopsis, along with several other Parmelioid genera, so that all the genera within the Parmeliaceae are about the same age.[4] Although some of their proposed taxonomic changes were accepted, the synonymisation of the Parmelioid genera with Nephromopsis was not accepted in a later critical analysis of the temporal phylogenetic approach for fungal classification.[5]
