''Biatora aureolepra'' is a

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

lichen A lichen ( , ) is a hybrid colony (biology), colony of algae or cyanobacteria living symbiotically among hypha, filaments of multiple fungus species, along with yeasts and bacteria embedded in the cortex or "skin", in a mutualism (biology), m ...

in the family

Ramalinaceae The Ramalinaceae are a family of lichen-forming fungi in the order Lecanorales. First proposed by Carl Adolph Agardh in 1821, the family now comprises 63 genera and about 750 species. Ramalinaceae lichens exhibit diverse growth forms, includin ...

, first found in inland rainforests of

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

. This lichen forms thin, powdery crusts that are bright yellow-green when fresh but fade to golden tones over time, and it has never been observed producing

fruiting bodies The sporocarp (also known as fruiting body, fruit body or fruitbody) of fungi is a multicellular structure on which spore-producing structures, such as basidia or asci, are borne. The fruitbody is part of the sexual phase of a fungal life cyc ...

. It grows on the bark and decaying wood of

conifer Conifers () are a group of conifer cone, cone-bearing Spermatophyte, seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the phylum, division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a sin ...

s in very humid,

old-growth forest An old-growth forest or primary forest is a forest that has developed over a long period of time without disturbance. Due to this, old-growth forests exhibit unique ecological features. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Natio ...

s and has a scattered distribution in northwestern North America, central Norway, and Austria.

Taxonomy

The species was described in 2009 by Toby Spribille and

Tor Tønsberg Tor Tønsberg (born 1948 in Oslo) is a Norwegian lichenologist who has made significant contributions to the taxonomy, chemistry, floristics, and phytogeography of lichens and lichenicolous fungi. Throughout his career, he has described more t ...

during a survey of inland rainforest lichens; the

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

, collected from soft

wood beside the Roaring River arm of

Quesnel Lake Quesnel Lake is a glacial lake or fjord in British Columbia, Canada, and is the major tributary of the Fraser River. With a maximum depth of , it is claimed to be the deepest fjord lake in the world, the deepest lake in BC, and the third-deepest ...

(716 m a.s.l.), is lodged in the

Canadian Museum of Nature The Canadian Museum of Nature (; CMN) is a national museums of Canada, national natural history museum based in Canada's National Capital Region (Canada), National Capital Region. The museum's exhibitions and public programs are housed in the Vi ...

herbarium, with duplicates in Bergen and other collections. Its name combines the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

(“golden-yellow”) with lepra ('scurf' or 'leprosy'), a nod to the species' golden hue in dried material and its powdery habit. Because ''B. aureolepra'' has never been seen with apothecia, its placement in ''Biatora'' is provisional. Morphological and chemical traits—especially the leprose crust and the C+ (rose) reaction—suggest affinity with ''

Biatora chrysantha ''Biatora'' is a genus of lichens in the family Ramalinaceae. Originally circumscribed in 1817,Fries EM, Sandberg A. (1817). ''Lichenum dianome nova''. Lund. the genus consists of crustose and squamulose lichens with green algal photobionts, bi ...

'' and '' B. chrysanthoides'', yet the new species lacks the small corticate typical of those taxa and it contains far more 5-''O''-methylhiascic acid. That

depside A depside is a type of polyphenolic compound composed of two or more monocyclic aromatic units linked by an ester group. Depsides are most often found in lichens, but have also been isolated from higher plants, including species of the Ericaceae, ...

is known as a major compound in only two leprose crusts worldwide (''B. aureolepra'' and '' Micarea coppinsii''), allowing the new species to be distinguished readily from superficially similar yellow-green crusts of '' Lecanora expallens'', '' Cliostomum'' spp., or ''

Lepraria ''Lepraria'' is a genus of leprose (powdery) crustose lichens that grows on its substrate like patches of granular, caked up, mealy dust grains.A taxonomic revision of the North American species of Lepraria s.l. that produce divaricatic acid, w ...

'' spp., which possess other chemistries and usually inhabit drier bark.

Description

''Biatora aureolepra'' forms a thin, leprose crust that is bright yellow-green when fresh but often fades to straw-coloured or golden tones in older

herbarium A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant biological specimen, specimens and associated data used for scientific study. The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sh ...

specimens. The thallus lacks any layered (stratified) structure; instead, the fungal filaments grow partly within the outer bark or sapwood (), while a single surface layer of powdery soredia builds a patchy film several centimetres across. Individual soredia are usually 18–21 μm in diameter (occasionally as small as 13 μm or as large as 30 μm) and frequently clump into up to 70 μm wide; viewed under polarised light these granules glitter with minute crystals. A slender, whitish may outline young colonies. The green-algal partner (a photobiont) consists of jelly-sheathed cells 6.5–14 μm wide that tend to cluster together. No sexual fruit-bodies (

apothecia An ascocarp, or ascoma (: ascomata), 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. As ...

) or asexual

pycnidia A pycnidium (plural pycnidia) is an asexual fruiting body produced by mitosporic fungi, for instance in the order Sphaeropsidales ( Deuteromycota, Coelomycetes) or order Pleosporales (Ascomycota, Dothideomycetes). It is often spherical or inve ...

have yet been observed, so the species is known only from its vegetative crust. Chemical tests reveal 5-''O''-methylhiascic acid as the dominant

secondary metabolite Secondary metabolites, also called ''specialised metabolites'', ''secondary products'', or ''natural products'', are organic compounds produced by any lifeform, e.g. bacteria, archaea, fungi, animals, or plants, which are not directly involved ...

, accompanied by traces of gyrophoric and

lecanoric acid Lecanoric acid is a chemical produced by several species of lichen.ubChem - Lecanoric acid"> Lecanoric acid is classified as a polyphenol and a didepside, and it functions as an antioxidant. It is an ester of orsellinic acid with itself. The acid ...

s; a quick rose-violet flash on the thallus with bleach (C+) is characteristic, while reactions with

potassium hydroxide Potassium hydroxide is an inorganic compound with the formula K OH, and is commonly called caustic potash. Along with sodium hydroxide (NaOH), KOH is a prototypical strong base. It has many industrial and niche applications, most of which utili ...

solution (K) and ''para''-phenylenediamine (Pd) are negative.

Habitat and distribution

In North America the lichen is confined to interior wet-belt forests of British Columbia and neighbouring

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

, where it colonises bark or decaying wood of western redcedar (''

Thuja plicata ''Thuja plicata'' is a large evergreen coniferous tree in the family Cupressaceae, native to the Pacific Northwest of North America. Its common name is western redcedar in the U.S. or western red cedar in the UK, and it is also called pacific re ...

'') and western hemlock (''

Tsuga heterophylla ''Tsuga heterophylla'', the western hemlock or western hemlock-spruce, is a species of Tsuga, hemlock native to the northwest coast of North America, with its northwestern limit on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, and its southeastern limit in nort ...

'') within humid,

old-growth An old-growth forest or primary forest is a forest that has developed over a long period of time without Disturbance (ecology), disturbance. Due to this, old-growth forests exhibit unique ecological features. The Food and Agriculture Organizati ...

stands that are mostly more than three centuries old. Sites range from about elevation and share a

microclimate A microclimate (or micro-climate) is a local set of atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric conditions that differ from those in the surrounding areas, often slightly but sometimes substantially. The term may refer to areas as small as a few square m ...

of persistent ground-level moisture beneath closed canopies. Across the North Atlantic, records from central Norway and, further south, a recent collection from the Hallstatt area of the Austrian

Alps The Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia. ...

place ''B. aureolepra'' on bark and dead wood of Norway spruce (''

Picea abies ''Picea abies'', the Norway spruce or European spruce, is a species of spruce native to Northern Europe, Northern, Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe. It has branchlets that typically hang downwards, and the largest cones of any spruce, ...

'') in cool, rain-drenched spruce forests of late-successional age. The Austrian specimen, gathered along the Waldbach river at about altitude in a shaded gorge that receives more than of annual precipitation, formed a straw-coloured, sterile thallus up to 9 cm across. These scattered localities—north-western North America, boreal Norway and the Central European Alps—reveal a markedly disjunct, moisture-dependent distribution that echoes patterns seen in several other inland-rainforest lichens. Given its minute, sterile habit and the limited number of targeted surveys, the species is probably under-recorded; nevertheless, its reliance on long-undisturbed, humid conifer stands means that continued logging and stand conversion in such forests could threaten its continuity.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q10429285 aureolepra Lichen species Lichens described in 2009 Taxa named by Toby Spribille Lichens of Western Canada Taxa named by Tor Tønsberg