Chapsa rubropulveracea
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| Chapsa rubropulveracea | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Ascomycota |
| Class: | Lecanoromycetes |
| Order: | Graphidales |
| Family: | Graphidaceae |
| Genus: | Chapsa |
| Species: | C. rubropulveracea |
| Binomial name | |
| Chapsa rubropulveracea | |
Chapsa rubropulveracea is a species of corticolous (bark-dwelling) crustose lichen in the family Graphidaceae.[1] This distinctive lichen is easily recognized by its flour-like white surface and bright red powdery coating on its small reproductive discs. It was originally collected in 1972 by the American lichenologist Mason Hale on the Caribbean island of Dominica, but was not formally described and named until 2011. The species is currently known only from its original discovery site in humid mountain forests at about 400 metres elevation, where it grows on the bark of hardwood trees.
Chapsa rubropulveracea was first collected in May 1972 on Dominica by the American lichenologist Mason E. Hale, who intended to describe it in the genus Thelotrema. Hale's draft name, however, never reached publication. Four decades later the species was formally validated in Chapsa by Armin Mangold, Robert Lücking and H. Thorsten Lumbsch, who kept Hale's epithet to mark the lichen's distinctive red "powder-dust" covering on its fruiting discs. The authors compared the new species with a handful of other Chapsa species that combine a pruina-dusted thallus, transversely septate, colourless spores and a pigmented apothecial disc. Within this group C. rubropulveracea is set apart by its dull crimson pruina, the absence of any metabolites detectable by thin-layer chromatography, and its relatively small ascospores (15–20 μm long). Its sister species appear to be C. farinosa from Costa Rica, which lacks a disc pigment and has larger spores, and C. waasii, whose apothecia are violet rather than red.[2]