Montanelia occultipanniformis
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| Montanelia occultipanniformis | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Ascomycota |
| Class: | Lecanoromycetes |
| Order: | Lecanorales |
| Family: | Parmeliaceae |
| Genus: | Montanelia |
| Species: | M. occultipanniformis |
| Binomial name | |
| Montanelia occultipanniformis | |
 Type locality: Tsarskaya Doroga, Russian Far East | |
Montanelia occultipanniformis is a species of foliose lichen in the family Parmeliaceae.[1] It was formally described in 2016 based on molecular evidence that distinguished it from the morphologically similar Montanelia panniformis. As a cryptic species, it cannot be reliably identified by appearance alone and requires DNA sequencing for confident determination. The species is known from disjunct populations in Interior Alaska and the Russian Far East.
Montanelia occultipanniformis was described as a new species in 2016 by Steven Leavitt, Theodore Esslinger, Pradeep Divakar, Ana Crespo, and H. Thorsten Lumbsch, in a study of cryptic "camouflage" lichens in the family Parmeliaceae. The species epithet alludes to its "hidden" status within material traditionally treated as Montanelia panniformis. The type was collected in the Russian Far East (Khabarovsk Krai, Bureinskiy Zapovednik, upper Pravaya Bureya River area), where it was found on a log in talus at about 900 m elevation; the holotype is specimen 'Spribille 31832', housed in the herbarium of the University of Graz (GZU).[2]
In the authors' phylogenetic framework, the species corresponds to specimens recovered in a distinct lineage (their clade named "M. panniformis A"), and it was diagnosed from M. panniformis (in the strict sense, or sensu stricto) using fixed nucleotide differences in the fungal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) barcode region, with additional support from coalescent-based analyses of multiple genetic loci. They also reported that no consistent morphological, chemical, or geographic traits had yet been found that cleanly separate it from M. panniformis as traditionally circumscribed, although the two sampled specimens fell at one end of the variation in that complex.[2]