Lobariella parmelioides
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| Lobariella parmelioides | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Ascomycota |
| Class: | Lecanoromycetes |
| Order: | Peltigerales |
| Family: | Peltigeraceae |
| Genus: | Lobariella |
| Species: | L. parmelioides |
| Binomial name | |
| Lobariella parmelioides B.Moncada & Lücking (2013) | |
Lobariella parmelioides is a species of foliose lichen in the family Peltigeraceae.[1] This leafy lichen forms loose rosettes up to 8 centimeters across on shrubs and small trees in high-elevation páramo grasslands, where it tolerates the exposed, windswept conditions typical of these alpine environments. It gets its name from its distinctive truncated lobes that resemble those of the unrelated lichen genus Parmelia, and appears to have a restricted distribution in Colombia, being abundant at its type locality but absent from most other surveyed páramos.
Lobariella parmelioides was described in 2013; the epithet reflects its truncate, Parmelia-like lobes. It differs from L. crenulata in its regularly truncate lobes and in having fruiting bodies (apothecia) with fewer marginal lobules. Chemically the species produces gyrophoric acid (chemosyndrome A1b).[2]
A three-locus maximum-likelihood tree recovered L. parmelioides as the strongly supported sister species of L. botryoides, cementing its position within the pallida–crenulata complex. In a broader ITS-only analysis, L. parmelioides clustered with L. botryoides, L. crenulata, L. pallida, L. pallidocrenulata, and L. reticulata, indicating these six morphologically disparate taxa form a late-diverging clade within the genus.[3]