''Absconditella rosea'' is a species of

crustose lichen Crustose lichens are lichens that form a crust which strongly adheres to the Substrate (biology), substrate (soil, rock, tree bark, etc.), making separation from the substrate impossible without destruction. The basic structure of crustose lichen ...

in the family

Stictidaceae The Stictidaceae are a family of fungi in the order Ostropales. The family was first described by Swedish mycologist Elias Magnus Fries in 1849. Genera This is a list of the genera contained within the Stictidaceae, based on a 2020 review and su ...

. Found in Venezuela, it was formally described as a new species in 2018 by lichenologists

Klaus Kalb Klaus Kalb (born 1942) is a German lichenologist and an authority on tropical lichens. Biography Klaus Kalb was born in Nuremberg in 1942 and grew up in southern Bavaria. From 1960 to 1965 he studied biology, chemistry, and geography at t ...

and

André Aptroot André Aptroot (Heemskerk, 1961) is a Dutch mycologist and lichenologist. In 1993 he did his PhD at the University of Utrecht under the supervision of Robbert Gradstein (nl). His dissertation was titled "Systematic studies on pyrenocarpous li ...

. The

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular wiktionary:en:specimen, specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to a ...

was collected at a location between Laguna Mucubají and Pico Mucuñuque ( Mérida) at an altitude of about ; here it was found growing on

detritus In biology, detritus () is dead particulate organic material, as distinguished from dissolved organic material. Detritus typically includes the bodies or fragments of bodies of dead organisms, and fecal material. Detritus typically hosts commun ...

páramo Páramo () can refer to a variety of alpine tundra ecosystems located in the Andes Mountain Range, South America. Some ecologists describe the páramo broadly as "all high, tropical, montane vegetation above the continuous timberline". A narrower ...

. The

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

refers to the pale pinkish colour of the ascomata. The lichen is only known to occur in Venezuela. A similar species in genus ''

Absconditella ''Absconditella'' is a genus of lichenised fungi in the family Stictidaceae. The genus was circumscribed in 1965 by Czech lichenologist Antonín Vězda, with '' Absconditella sphagnorum'' assigned as the type species. ''Absconditella'' is chara ...

'' is '' A. lignicola'', which can be distinguished from ''A. rosea'' by its whitish apothecia and differences in

ascospore An ascus (; ) is the sexual spore-bearing cell produced in ascomycete fungi. Each ascus usually contains eight ascospores (or octad), produced by meiosis followed, in most species, by a mitotic cell division. However, asci in some genera or s ...

morphology.

References

Ostropales Lichen species Lichens described in 2018 Lichens of Venezuela Taxa named by André Aptroot Taxa named by Klaus Kalb {{Ostropales-stub