Thelliana
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| Thelliana | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Ascomycota |
| Class: | Lecanoromycetes |
| Order: | Teloschistales |
| Family: | Teloschistaceae |
| Genus: | Thelliana S.Y.Kondr., Kärnefelt, Elix & Hur (2015) |
| Species: | T. pseudokiamae |
| Binomial name | |
| Thelliana pseudokiamae S.Y.Kondr., Kärnefelt, Elix & Hur (2015) | |
Thelliana is a single-species fungal genus in the family Teloschistaceae.[1] It comprises the species Thelliana pseudokiamae, a crustose lichen. It forms a dull brownish-yellow to brownish-orange crust on rock surfaces, and is known only from South Australia. Later phylogenetic studies have questioned its placement, suggesting that Thelliana may belong within the genus Filsoniana.
Thelliana was described by Sergey Kondratyuk and colleagues in 2015 for T. pseudokiamae, an Australian lichen that is the type and only species of the genus. On the basis of combined data of three genetic markers (ITS, LSU, and mitochondrial SSU sequence data), they treated it as a distinct lineage in the family Teloschistaceae and placed it in the newly proposed subfamily Brownlielloideae. The generic name honours the Swedish lichenologist Arne Thell. The species epithet pseudokiamae was chosen to reflect the species' similarity to Filsoniana kiamae.[2]
Wen and colleagues in 2019 re-examined these relationships and argued that the Brownlielloideae concept used in the 2015 study was affected by contaminant SSU data. In their analysis, Thelliana pseudokiamae grouped with species of Filsoniana within Teloschistoideae rather than in a separate subfamily, indicating a different interpretation of its higher-level placement.[3] Wilk and colleagues later revisited the Brownlielloideae concept and concluded that it had been based on a chimeric DNA data set. In their revised phylogeny, Thelliana was placed within Teloschistoideae, in the Filsoniana clade, and was treated as a putative synonym of Filsoniana.[4]