Gyalideopsis
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| Gyalideopsis | |
|---|---|
.jpg) | |
| Gyalideopsis buckii | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Ascomycota |
| Class: | Lecanoromycetes |
| Order: | Graphidales |
| Family: | Gomphillaceae |
| Genus: | Gyalideopsis Vèzda (1972) |
| Type species | |
| Gyalideopsis peruviana G.Merr. ex Vězda (1972) | |
| Synonyms[1] | |
Gyalideopsis is a genus of lichen-forming fungi in the family Gomphillaceae. Gyalideopsis species form delicate, film-like crusts on a wide variety of surfaces including tree bark, rocks, and mosses, often in tropical and temperate forests worldwide. Species in the genus produce distinctive small, scale-like structures called hyphophores, which are thought to aid in asexual reproduction where ascospore-producing structures are absent or uncommon. Members of this genus lack the distinctive chemical compounds found in many other lichens, making them reliant on microscopic features and spore characteristics for scientific identification.
Gyalideopsis was erected by the Czech lichenologist Antonín Vězda in 1972, during work towards a revision of the Gyalectaceae and other groups with "gyalectoid" (gyalectacean-like) apothecia (disc-shaped fruiting bodies). Vězda had found two poorly placed species (then known as Gyalecta peruviana and Lecidea athalloides) that resembled Gyalidea in general form and many anatomical traits, but differed in having a dense network of branched, interconnected paraphysoids (sterile filaments in the spore-bearing layer) rather than the unbranched, septate paraphyses typical of Gyalidea. When similar material reached him from Peter W. James in 1970, a comparative study of four taxa led Vězda to treat them as all in the same genus and to publish the new genus Gyalideopsis for them.[3]
In the protologue, Vězda characterised Gyalideopsis as a crustose lichen with a thin, usually unbordered thallus containing a green Trebouxia photobiont, and dark apothecia with a persistent margin. Microscopically, both the apothecial margin (excipulum) and the hymenium are composed of slender hyphae that branch and anastomose in abundant gelatin; the asci have an apical apparatus of the "nasse" type; and the colourless spores are transversely septate or muriform (divided into many small compartments), often slightly constricted at their septa. Vězda designated Gyalideopsis peruviana as the type species.[3]
On the basis of these characters, Vězda proposed placing the genus in the family Asterothyriaceae (as proposed by Rolf Santesson), a group then best known from foliicolous (leaf-dwelling) lichens. He considered Gyalideopsis closest to the asterothyriacean genera Tricharia and Calenia: compared with Tricharia, Gyalideopsis lacks thallus hairs and is not obligatorily leaf-dwelling, while Calenia differs in having apothecia covered by thallus tissue. In its original circumscription, Gyalideopsis contained four species: G. peruviana, G. anastomosans, and G. muscicola (all described as new) and G. athalloides (a new combination).[3]