''Multisporidea'' is a fungal genus 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

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

, containing the single species ''Multisporidea nitida'', a

corticolous lichen A corticolous lichen is a lichen that grows on bark.Alan Silverside's Lichen Glossary (a-f), Alan Silverside/ref> This is contrasted with lignicolous lichen, which grows on wood that has had the bark stripped from it,Alan Silverside's Lichen Glos ...

found in

Réunion Réunion (; french: La Réunion, ; previously ''Île Bourbon''; rcf, label= Reunionese Creole, La Rényon) is an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas department and region of France. It is located approximately east of the island ...

. The species was described as new to science in 2021 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 was collected in the Cirque de Cilaos, where it was found growing on tree bark in the remnant of a rain forest, at an altitude of . The lichen has a dull, whitish to pale pinkish-brown

thallus Thallus (plural: thalli), from Latinized Greek (), meaning "a green shoot" or "twig", is the vegetative tissue of some organisms in diverse groups such as algae, fungi, some liverworts, lichens, and the Myxogastria. Many of these organisms wer ...

that is sometimes bordered by a black hypothallus measuring up to 0.3 mm wide. 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 ...

''nitida'' refers to the glossy apothecia, while the generic name alludes to the multi-spored asci. The lichen is unreactive to standard chemical spot tests, and no lichen substances are detected with thin-layer chromatography.

References

Malmideaceae Lichen species Taxa described in 2021 Taxa named by André Aptroot Taxa named by Klaus Kalb Monotypic Lecanorales genera {{Lecanorales-stub