''Malmidea attenboroughii'' is a species of corticolous (bark-dwelling), crustose lichen in the family

Malmideaceae Malmideaceae is a family of crustose and corticolous lichens in the order Lecanorales. It contains eight genera and about 70 species. Taxonomy Malmideaceae was created in 2011 to accommodate a group of species, formerly placed in genus ''Malcolm ...

. It is known to occur from a single location in the

Amazon rainforest The Amazon rainforest, Amazon jungle or ; es, Selva amazónica, , or usually ; french: Forêt amazonienne; nl, Amazoneregenwoud. In English, the names are sometimes capitalized further, as Amazon Rainforest, Amazon Forest, or Amazon Jungle. ...

Bolivia , image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg , flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center , flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...

Taxonomy

The lichen was formally described in 2019 by Martin Kukwa, Beata Guzow-Krzemińska, Magdalena Kosecka, Agnieska Jabłońska, and Adam Flakus. The type specimen was collected from the in the Higher University of San Andrés ( Abel Iturralde,

La Paz La Paz (), officially known as Nuestra Señora de La Paz (Spanish pronunciation: ), is the seat of government of the Bolivia, Plurinational State of Bolivia. With an estimated 816,044 residents as of 2020, La Paz is the List of Bolivian cities ...

) at an elevation of . It is only known to occur at the type locality, where the habitat is pre-Andean

. The species epithet honours English broadcaster and naturalist Sir

David Attenborough Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural histor ...

, "for his major contributions to the popularization of knowledge about biodiversity and nature protection".

Description

The lichen has a dull greenish-grey, crustose thallus that is up to 0.2 mm thick. Its surface texture is described as "minutely verrucose" (covered with small pimples) to "granulose-isidiate" (covered in tiny elongated granule-like thallus outgrowths that resemble isidia); the individual granules are 50–125

μm The micrometre ( international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; SI symbol: μm) or micrometer (American spelling), also commonly known as a micron, is a unit of length in the International System of Unit ...

in diameter. The thallus is surrounded by a thin, white, fibrous prothallus. The apothecia are rounded to irregular in outline, measuring up to 1.0 mm in diameter, with a flat flesh-coloured to brown disc. The margin of the apothecia (the ''excipulum'') is thin, cream-coloured to dark grey-brown, and either smooth or verrucose (warty) due to the presence of internal chambers in the internal medulla. There are eight ascospores in each

ascus 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 ...

. The spores have an

ellipsoid An ellipsoid is a surface that may be obtained from a sphere by deforming it by means of directional scalings, or more generally, of an affine transformation. An ellipsoid is a quadric surface; that is, a surface that may be defined as the ...

al shape and dimensions of 12–16 by 7.5–9

. An unknown yellow pigment is present as crystals in the medulla.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q108007114 Malmideaceae Lichen species Lichens described in 2019 Lichens of Bolivia Taxa named by Adam Grzegorz Flakus

Taxonomy

Description

See also

References