Bagliettoa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Bagliettoa | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Bagliettoa cazzae | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Ascomycota |
| Class: | Eurotiomycetes |
| Order: | Verrucariales |
| Family: | Verrucariaceae |
| Genus: | Bagliettoa A.Massal. (1853) |
| Type species | |
| Bagliettoa limborioides A.Massal. (1853) | |
| Species | |
|
See text | |
Bagliettoa is a genus of lichen-forming fungi in the family Verrucariaceae.[1] Bagliettoa species are endolithic, growing between the grains of solid rock. These lichens are almost invisible to the naked eye, living mostly hidden within limestone and other calcium-rich rocks with only a thin polished rim visible on the surface. They reproduce through tiny flask-shaped fruiting bodies that bore neat pits into the rock as they develop.
The genus was circumscribed by the Italian lichenologist Abramo Bartolommeo Massalongo in 1853. He assigned Bagliettoa limborioides as the type species.[2] The group comprises endolithic lichens, meaning their thalli are immersed within calcareous rock substrates. For much of the twentieth century, species now placed in Bagliettoa were inconsistently classified, with many retained in the genus Verrucaria. Although Massalongo and later authors recognised some of their distinctive traits—such as a shield-like involucrellum with a star-shaped aperture—taxonomic boundaries remained unclear. In the 1930s to 1950s, Georg Hermann Zschacke and Miroslav Servít attempted revisions, with Servít introducing the superfluous genus Protobagliettoa for species lacking mature spores, complicating the classification further.[3]
Subsequent taxonomists, including Josef Poelt and Antonín Vězda in the 1980s, transferred several species from Verrucaria into Bagliettoa on morphological grounds. A 2003 morphological revision by Josef Pepa Halda reduced many species to synonymy and narrowed the concept of the genus, yet he did not recognise Bagliettoa as distinct from Verrucaria. However, molecular phylogenetics studies beginning in the 2000s clarified that Bagliettoa forms a monophyletic group within Verrucariaceae. The type species B. limborioides was included for the first time in a multigene analysis in a 2014 study by Yuzon and colleagues. This research confirmed the genus as genetically distinct and expanded its morphological definition to include species lacking a star-shaped involucrellum, such as B. marmorea and B. calciseda.[3]
