''Acanthothecis kalbii'' is a species of script lichen in the family

Graphidaceae The Graphidaceae are a family of lichen-forming fungi in the order Graphidales. The family contains nearly a hundred genera and more than 2000 species. Although the family has a cosmopolitan distribution, most Graphidaceae species occur in tropic ...

. It was described as a new species in 2009 by Manuela Dal-Forno and Sionara Eliasaro. The

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

was collected from in

Pontal do Paraná Pontal do Paraná is a municipality in the state of Paraná in the Southern Region of Brazil. Pontal do Paraná is home to the Center for Marine Studies, Federal University of Paraná. The municipality contains the Rio Perequê Municipal Nature ...

, Brazil. The

specific epithet In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin gramm ...

honours German lichenologist

Klaus Kalb Klaus Kalb (born 1942) is a German lichenologist and an authority on tropical lichens. Born in Nuremberg, he studied at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg before pursuing a career that significantly advanced the field of lichenology, parti ...

Description

The lichen has a smooth, off-white

thallus Thallus (: 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. A thallus usually names the entir ...

that grows on bark. It has oblong lirellae, the same colour as the thallus, measuring 0.3–0.9 mm long by 0.15–0.25 mm wide. Its

ascospore In fungi, an ascospore is the sexual spore formed inside an ascus—the sac-like cell that defines the division Ascomycota, the largest and most diverse Division (botany), division of fungi. After two parental cell nucleus, nuclei fuse, the ascu ...

s, which number eight per

ascus An ascus (; : asci) 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 gen ...

, are

ellipsoid An ellipsoid is a surface that can be obtained from a sphere by deforming it by means of directional Scaling (geometry), scalings, or more generally, of an affine transformation. An ellipsoid is a quadric surface; that is, a Surface (mathemat ...

with 3 to 5 transverse

septa SEPTA, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, is a regional public transportation authority that operates bus, rapid transit, commuter rail, light rail, and electric trolleybus services for nearly four million people througho ...

; they measure 9–15

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

long by 4–5 μm wide.

Norstictic acid Norstictic acid is a depsidone produced as a secondary metabolites in lichens. The compound contains both an aldehyde carbonyl group and an adjacent hydroxyl In chemistry, a hydroxy or hydroxyl group is a functional group with the chemical fo ...

is present in the thallus.

References

kalbii Lichen species Lichens described in 2009 Lichens of Brazil Taxa named by Manuela Dal-Forno {{Ostropales-stub