Sarrameana
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| Sarrameana | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Ascomycota |
| Class: | Lecanoromycetes |
| Order: | Sarrameanales |
| Family: | Sarrameanaceae |
| Genus: | Sarrameana Vězda & P.James (1973) |
| Type species | |
| Sarrameana paradoxa Vězda & P.James (1973) | |
| Species | |
Sarrameana is a small genus of lichen-forming fungi in the family Sarrameanaceae.[1] Established in 1973 from specimens collected in New Caledonia, this genus is distinguished by its unusual spores that have long, hair-like tails at both ends and often coil in spirals within the spore-containing structures. The genus contains two species of small, crust-forming lichens that grow on bark in cool, humid forests of the southern hemisphere, including New Caledonia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Both species form a thin, white thallus with scattered black fruiting bodies.
Sarrameana was circumscribed in 1973 by the lichenologists Antonín Vězda and Peter James for material from New Caledonia with an unusual spore type; because the fungus did not fit any known lecideoid genera, they erected a new genus with Sarrameana paradoxa as the type species and, pending broader study, placed it only tentatively in the Lecideaceae in the loose sense. The type collection comes from the Sarraméa area (Col d'Amieu Forestry Station), which also was the inspiration for the genus name.[2]
In Australasian treatments from the mid-2000s, Sarrameana paradoxa has been sunk into S. albidoplumbea on the grounds that the "tailed" ascospore tips used to separate the type are variable and not taxonomically reliable.[3] However, this synonymy has not been universally adopted: major global nomenclators continue to maintain entries for both names as separate species.[4][5] In their 1996 revision, Gintaras Kantvilas and Vězda also declined to conserve the younger name Sarrameana paradoxa, arguing that the older epithet albidoplumbea was already the more established usage in the lichen literature of Tasmania and New Zealand.[6]