New Order: Lepidostromatales

Some colleagues from the Field Museum and I recently described a new order of fungi, Lepidostromatales (Hodkinson et al. 2014). One thing that makes it unique is that it is the only order of basidiomycete fungi containing only lichenized members. The ordinal placement of the family Lepidostromataceae had previously been uncertain, but our molecular analyses confirmed its isolated position and made it clear that the best treatment would be to give it its own separate order. Please have a look at the new paper in Fungal Diversity for a key to all of the species in the new order!

- Brendan

[Update: I decided to also post the key to the species here.]

-------------
Hodkinson, B. P., B. Moncada, and R. Lücking. 2014. Lepidostromatales, a new order of lichenized fungi (Basidiomycota, Agaricomycetes), with two new genera, Ertzia and Sulzbacheromyces, and one new species, Lepidostroma winklerianum. Fungal Diversity 64(1): 165-179.
Download publication (PDF file)
View publication (website)

-------------

[This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under DEB-0715660.]