Echinoplaca schizidiifera
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| Echinoplaca schizidiifera | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Ascomycota |
| Class: | Lecanoromycetes |
| Order: | Graphidales |
| Family: | Gomphillaceae |
| Genus: | Echinoplaca |
| Species: | E. schizidiifera |
| Binomial name | |
| Echinoplaca schizidiifera J.E.Hern. & Lücking (2011) | |
Echinoplaca schizidiifera is a species of lichen in the family Gomphillaceae.[1] Described in 2011 from specimens collected in El Ávila National Park near Caracas, Venezuela, this lichen is notable for its unique method of reproduction. Instead of producing sexual spores, it breaks apart into small flakes that detach and spread to new locations, a trait unknown in other members of its genus. The species grows on the leaves of Clusia trees in misty cloud forests at about 2,000 metres elevation and is known only from Venezuela.
Echinoplaca schizidiifera was formally described in 2011 by Jesús Ernesto Hernández and Robert Lücking from material collected in the cloud forested-slopes of El Ávila National Park above Caracas, Venezuela. The species belongs to the family Gomphillaceae, a group of mainly tropical, leaf- and bark-dwelling lichens noted for their minute fruit-bodies and often elaborate vegetative propagules. Its specific epithet, schizidiifera, highlights the lichen's most distinctive trait: the thallus breaks up into irregular flakes called schizidia that act as dispersal units. Such schizidial reproduction is unknown in other members of Echinoplaca and rare within the family as a whole, prompting the authors to regard E. schizidiifera as morphologically isolated within the genus while retaining it there provisionally until broader phylogenetic work is completed.[2]