''Porina weghiana'' is a rare species of foliicolous (leaf-dwelling) lichen in the family

Porinaceae Trichotheliaceae is a family of lichen-forming fungi in the order Gyalectales. The family was circumscribed by Friedrich von Schilling and Friedrich August Georg Bitter in 1927. In a recent (2018) molecular phylogenetic analysis, Trichotheliac ...

. Found in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

, it was formally described as new to science in 2014 by Dries Van den Broeck,

Robert Lücking Robert Lücking (born 1964) is a German lichenologist. He is a leading expert on foliicolous lichens–lichens that live on leaves. Life and career Born in Ulm in 1964, Lücking earned both his master's (1990) and PhD degree (1994) at the Univ ...

, and Damien Ertz. The

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular 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 anchor or centralizes th ...

was collected in the valley of Loika (a

tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drai ...

of the

Itimbiri River The Itimbiri River is a right tributary of the Congo River, which it joins above Bumba. At one time it was important as a navigable waterway for transporting good from the northeast of the country down to the Congo. Course The Itimbiri River or ...

Province of Équateur Équateur is one of the 21 new provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo created in the 2015 repartitioning. Équateur, Mongala, Nord-Ubangi, Sud-Ubangi, and Tshuapa provinces are the result of the dismemberment of the former Équate ...

) at an altitude of , where it was found growing on

palm tree The Arecaceae is a family of perennial flowering plants in the monocot order Arecales. Their growth form can be climbers, shrubs, tree-like and stemless plants, all commonly known as palms. Those having a tree-like form are called palm ...

leaves along the river. It is only known to occur in the type locality. It resembles '' Porina ornata'' in appearance but differs in having disc-shaped

isidia An isidium is a vegetative reproductive structure present in some lichens. Isidia are outgrowths of the thallus surface, and are corticated (i.e., containing the outermost layer of the thallus), usually with a columnar structure, and consisting ...

, yellow

perithecia An ascocarp, or ascoma (), is the fruiting body ( sporocarp) of an ascomycete phylum fungus. It consists of very tightly interwoven hyphae and millions of embedded asci, each of which typically contains four to eight ascospores. Ascocarps are mos ...

lacking apical appendages, and

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 that are smaller and have fewer

septa The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) is a regional public transportation authority that operates bus, rapid transit, commuter rail, light rail, and electric trolleybus services for nearly 4 million people in five c ...

. The species epithet is named after the first author's girlfriend, Micheline Wegh.

References

Gyalectales Lichen species Lichens of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Lichens described in 2014 Taxa named by Robert Lücking {{Lecanoromycetes-stub