New and noteworthy lichen-forming and lichenicolous fungi 7

Nineteen new to science species of lichen forming fungi, i.e.: Agonimia ascendens S. Y. Kondr., L. Lőkös et J.-S. Hur, A. sunchonensis S. Y. Kondr. et J.-S. Hur, A. yongsangensis S. Y. Kondr. et J.-S. Hur, Biatora loekoesiana S. Y. Kondr. et J.-S. Hur, Caloplaca ivanpisutii S. Y. Kond., L. Lőkös et J.-S. Hur, Candelariella makarevichiae S. Y. Kondr., L. Lőkös et J.-S. Hur, Huriella pohangensis S. Y. Kondr., L. Lőkös et J.-S. Hur, H. salyangiana S. Y. Kondr. et J.-S. Hur, Hyperphyscia oxneri S. Y. Kondr. et J.-S. Hur, Nectriopsis gangwondoensis S. Y. Kondr., L. Lőkös et J.-S. Hur, Porina ulleungdoensis S. Y. Kondr., L. Lőkös, J. Halda et J.-S. Hur, Psoroglaena gangwondoensis S. Y. Kondr., L. Lőkös, J.-J. Woo et J.-S. Hur, Pyrenopsis cavernicola S. Y. Kondr., L. Lőkös et J.-S. Hur, Rhizocarpon sunchonense S. Y. Kondr. et J.-S. Hur, Rufoplaca ulleungensis S. Y. Kondr., L. Lőkös et J.-S. Hur, Sarcogyne ulleungdoensis S. Y. Kondr., L. Lőkös et J.-S. Hur, Skyttea bumyoungsungii S. Y. Kondr. et J.-S. Hur, Thelopsis gangwondoensis S. Y. Kondr., L. Lőkös, J.-J. Woo et J.-S. Hur, Topelia loekoesiana S. Y. Kondr., J.-J. Woo et J.-S. Hur, all from South Korea, as well as Gallowayella awasthiana S. Y. Kondr. et D. K. Upreti from India and Franwilsia skottsbergii S. Y. Kondr., A. Thell, S.-O. Oh et J.-S. Hur from Chile are described, illustrated and compared with closely related taxa. A key to Agonimia species known from Eastern Asia is also included. Lecanora helicopis is recorded for Korea for the first time, as well as a number of new to Jeju-do Island species (i.e.: Agonimia loekoesii, Biatora pseudosambuci, Buellia extremoorientalis, and Ivanpisutia oxneri) are recorded. Additional data on conidiomata and morphological characters of thallus and apothecia and illustrations as well as data on newly located isotype specimens recently described from Canary Islands, Spain Fominiella tenerifensis are provided. Two new combinations, i.e.: Phaeophyscia saxatilis (for Physcia saxatilis Kashiw.), and Xanthoparmelia umezuana (for Karoowia umezuana Moon K. H. et Kashiw.) are also proposed

Vitalism in Early Modern Medical and Philosophical Thought

Vitalism is a notoriously deceptive term. It is very often defined as the view, in biology, in early modern medicine and differently, in early modern philosophy, that living beings differ from the rest of the physical universe due to their possessing an additional ‘life-force’, ‘vital principle’, ‘entelechy’, enormon or élan vital. Such definitions most often have an explicit pejorative dimension: vitalism is a primitive or archaic view, that has somehow survived the emergence of modern science (the latter being defined in many different ways, from demystified Cartesian reductionism to experimental medicine, biochemistry or genetics: Cimino and Duchesneau eds. 1997, Normandin and Wolfe eds. 2013). Such dismissive definitions of vitalism are meant to dispense with argument or analysis. Curiously, the term has gained some popularity in English-language scholarship on early modern philosophy in the past few decades, where it is used without any pejorative dimension, to refer to a kind of ‘active matter’ view, in which matter is not reducible to the (mechanistic) properties of size, shape and motion, possessing instead some internal dynamism or activity (see e.g. James 1999, Boyle 2018, Borcherding forthcoming). The latter meaning is close to what the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth termed ‘hylozoism’, namely the attribution of life, agency or mind to matter, and he implicitly targeted several figures I shall mention here, notably Margaret Cavendish and Francis Glisson, for holding this view. However, one point I shall make in this entry is that when vitalism first appears by name, and as a self-designation, in the Montpellier School (associated with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Montpellier, in the second half of the eighteenth century; thus vitalisme appears first, followed shortly thereafter by Vitalismus in German, with ‘vitalism’ appearing in English publications only in the early nineteenth century: Toepfer 2011), it is quite different from both the more ‘supernatural’ view described above – chiefly espoused by its rather obsessive opponents – and from the more neutral, but also de-biologized philosophical view (that of e.g. Cavendish or Conway who are, broadly speaking naturalists). Rather than appealing to a metaphysics of vital force, or of self-organizing matter, this version of vitalism, which I shall refer to as ‘medical vitalism’, seems to be more of a ‘systemic’ theory: an attempt to grasp and describe top-level (‘organizational’, ‘organismic’, ‘holistic’) features of living systems (Wolfe 2017, 2019). In this entry I seek to introduce some periodization in our thinking about early modern (and Enlightenment) vitalism, emphasizing the difference between the seventeenth-century context and that of the following generations – culminating in the ideas of the Montpellier School. This periodization should also function as a kind of taxonomy or at least distinction between some basic types of vitalism. As I discuss in closing, these distinctions can cut across the texts and figures we are dealing with, differently: metaphysical vs. non-metaphysical vitalism, philosophical vs. medical vitalism, medical vs. ‘embryological’ vitalism, and so on. A difference I can only mention but not explore in detail is that the more medically grounded, ‘organismic’ vitalism is significantly post-Cartesian while the more biological/embryological vitalism is, inasmuch as it is a dynamic, self-organizing matter theory, an extension of Renaissance ideas (chymiatry, Galenism and in general theories of medical spirits). I examine successively vitalism’s Renaissance prehistory, its proliferation as ‘vital matter theory’ in seventeenth-century England (in authors such as Cavendish, Conway and Glisson, with brief considerations on Harvey and van Helmont), and its mature expression in eighteenth-century Montpellier (notably with Bordeu and Ménuret de Chambaud)

Transoceanic Dispersal and Subsequent Diversification on Separate Continents Shaped Diversity of the Xanthoparmelia pulla Group (Ascomycota)

In traditional morphology-based concepts many species of lichenized fungi have world-wide distributions. Molecular data have revolutionized the species delimitation in lichens and have demonstrated that we underestimated the diversity of these organisms. The aim of this study is to explore the phylogeography and the evolutionary patterns of the Xanthoparmelia pulla group, a widespread group of one of largest genera of macrolichens. We used a dated phylogeny based on nuITS and nuLSU rDNA sequences and performed an ancestral range reconstruction to understand the processes and explain their current distribution, dating the divergence of the major lineages in the group. An inferred age of radiation of parmelioid lichens and the age of a Parmelia fossil were used as the calibration points for the phylogeny. The results show that many species of the X. pulla group as currently delimited are polyphyletic and five major lineages correlate with their geographical distribution and the biosynthetic pathways of secondary metabolites. South Africa is the area where the X. pulla group radiated during the Miocene times, and currently is the region with the highest genetic, morphological and chemical diversity. From this center of radiation the different lineages migrated by long-distance dispersal to others areas, where secondary radiations developed. The ancestral range reconstruction also detected that a secondary lineage migrated from Australia to South America via long-distance dispersal and subsequent continental radiation

Alectorioid morphologies in Paleogene lichens : New evidence and re-evaluation of the fossil Alectoria succini Mägdefrau

One of the most important issues in molecular dating studies concerns the incorporation of reliable fossil taxa into the phylogenies reconstructed from DNA sequence variation in extant taxa. Lichens are symbiotic associations between fungi and algae and/or cyanobacteria. Several lichen fossils have been used as minimum age constraints in recent studies concerning the diversification of the Ascomycota. Recent evolutionary studies of Lecanoromycetes, an almost exclusively lichen-forming class in the Ascomycota, have utilized the Eocene amber inclusion Alectoria succinic as a minimum age constraint. However, a re-investigation of the type material revealed that this inclusion in fact represents poorly preserved plant remains, most probably of a root. Consequently, this fossil cannot be used as evidence of the presence of the genus Alectoria (Parmeliaceae, Lecanorales) or any other lichens in the Paleogene. However, newly discovered inclusions from Paleogene Baltic and Bitterfeld amber verify that alectorioid morphologies in lichens were in existence by the Paleogene. The new fossils represent either a lineage within the alectorioid group or belong to the genus Oropogon.Peer reviewe

Phylogenetic relationships of Stereocaulaceae based on simultaneous analysis of beta-tubulin, GAPDH and SSU rDNA sequences

The phylogenetic relationships of the lichenised ascomycete family Stereocaulaceae were investigated with partial beta-tubulin, partial glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) and SSU rDNA sequence data. Due to the marked length variation in the SSU rDNA sequences, the analyses were performed with direct optimization. The combined analysis of the beta-tubulin, GAPDH and SSU rDNA sequences as well as the separate analyses of beta-tubulin and GAPDH data recognized the monophyletic group comprising Lepraria, Muhria and Stereocaulon. In the combined analysis Stereocaulon tornense appears as a basal taxon in the Stereocaulon clade, suggesting that the crustose growth form and the absence of cephalodia are primitive features within the genus. Muhria is nested in Stereocaulon and groups with the crustose S. cumulatum and S. leucophaeopsis. The genus Lepraria is monophyletic if Leproloma is included, but species that were represented by several specimens in our study, i.e., Lepraria jackii and Leproloma membranaceun, do not appear as monophyletic entities. The genus Pilophorus is included in Cladoniaceae. Combined analysis of the three data-sets clearly led to an increase in support values compared to the separate analyses, showing high support for the monophyly of families Cladoniaceae and Stereocaulaceae and for the sistergroup relation for the two families. The relationships between higher groupings did not reach high support values probably due to the incongruencies among the three datasets

Cetrarioid lichens from India revised, including Nephromopsis awasthii sp. nov. and new records

Morpho-taxonomic studies of cetrarioid lichens from India recorded 46 species representing Cetraria, Melanelia, Nephromopsis, and Platismatia. Nephromopsis awasthii is described as new to science; and Cetraria endochrysea, C. sinensis, Melanelia agnata, Nephromopsis ciliaris, N. morrisonicola, N. pseudocomplicata, N. pseudoweberi, N. rugosa, N. weii, and N. yunnanensis are reported for the first time from India. A key to all genera and species of cetrarioid lichens in India is provided together with their detailed morpho- taxonomic characters and distribution

Current Taxonomy of the Lichen Family Teloschistaceae from India with Descriptions of New Species

The present study recorded 36 genera and 115 species of the lichen family Teloschistaceae in India. Three species, i.e. Caloplaca rajasthanica S. Y. Kondr., Upreti et G. P. Sinha, Huriella upretiana S. Y. Kondr., G. K. Mishra, Nayaka et A. Thell, and Squamulea uttarkashiana S. Y. Kondr., Upreti, Nayaka et A. Thell, are described as new species. Seven new combinations, i.e. Fulgogasparrea awasthii (Y. Joshi et Upreti) S. Y. Kondr., Upreti et A. Thell, Neobrownliella cinnabarina (Ach.) S. Y. Kondr., Upreti et A. Thell, Neobrownliella holochracea (Nyl.) S. Y. Kondr., Upreti et A. Thell, Opeltia flavorubescens (Huds.) S. Y. Kondr. et J.-S. Hur, Oxneriopsis bassiae (Willd. ex Ach.) S. Y. Kondr., Upreti et J.-S. Hur, Upretia hueana (B. de Lesd.) S. Y. Kondr. et Upreti and Megaspora subpoliotera (Y. Joshi et Upreti) S. Y. Kondr., Upreti et A. Thell, are proposed based on nrITS phylogeny in the Teloschistaceae and Megasporaceae consequently. Validation of combination Olegblumia demissa is provided. Molecular data on Fulgogasparrea awasthii and Megaspora subpoliotera are recorded from India for the first time. Four new genera including one species each, i.e. Lazarenkoiopsis ussuriensis (Oxner, S. Y. Kondr. et Elix) S. Y. Kondr., L. Lőkös et J.-S. Hur, Mikhtomia gordejevii (Tomin) S. Y. Kondr., Kärnefelt, Elix, A. Thell, J. Kim, A. S. Kondratiuk et J.-S. Hur, Olegblumia demissa (Flot.) S. Y. Kondr., L. Lőkös, J. Kim, A. S. Kondratiuk, S.-O. Oh et J.-S. Hur and Pachypeltis intrudens (H. Magn.) Søchting, Frödén et Arup, as well as the genus Megaspora are reported as new for the Indian lichen biota. Out of the eight lichenogeographical regions of India, the Western Himalayas show the maximum diversity of Teloschistaceae members represented with 110 species followed by the Central Indian region with 38 species. The lichen genus Caloplaca is represented with 50 species in the country followed by Athallia and Rusavskia with 6 species each. The saxicolous taxa exhibit dominance with 65 species whereas the corticolous and terricolous taxa are represented by 48 and 9 species, respectively. Among the different states of India, Uttarakhand showed the maximum diversity represented by 54 species followed by the state of Jammu & Kashmir with 37 species, whereas the Jharkhand and Meghalaya states are represented only by the occurrence of a single species each. A key to the genera and species together with the description, basionyms and synonyms of each species are provided