Hypotrachyna is a pantropical genus of the Parmeliaceae, which includes c. 260 species. It was originally described to include parmelioid lichens with a combination of morphological characters such as a pored epicortex, narrow, sublinear to linear lobes with truncate apices, dichotomously branched rhizines, oval-ellipsoid ascospores, and bifusiform conidia. The genus appeared to be paraphyletic (see e.g. Crespo & al. 2010), so that 15 Asian species were segregated in the new genus Remototrachyna Divakar & A. Crespo. As a consequence of the phylogenetic study of the Hypotrachyna-clade by Divakar & al. (2013), the genera Cetrariastrum, Everniastrum, and Parmelinopsis were reduced to synonymy with Hypotrachyna. A key and a detailed analysis of the 12 species occurring in Europe was published by Masson (2005).
The genus is still very poorly known in Italy. The present key includes all species known to occur in the Country (Nimis 2016), plus 3 species which were never reported from Italy, but whose presence - especially in the Tyrrhenian ecoregion - cannot be excluded, for a total of 10 species.

References

Crespo A., Kauff F., Divakar P.K., del Prado R., Pérez-Ortega S., Amo de Paz G., Ferencova Z., Blanco O., Roca-Valiente B., Núñez-Zapata J., Cubas P., Argüello A., Elix J.A., Esslinger T.L., Hawksworth D.L., Millanes A., Molina M.C., Wedin M., Ahti T., Aptroot 2010. Phylogenetic generic classification of parmelioid lichens (Parmeliaceae, Ascomycota) based on molecular, morphological and chemical evidence. Taxon, 59, 6: 1735-1753.
Divakar P.K., Crespo A., Nuñez-Zapata J., Flakus A., Sipman H.J.M., Elix J.A., Lumbsch H.T. 2013. A molecular perspective on generic concepts in the Hypotrachyna clade (Parmeliaceae, Ascomycota). Phytotaxa, 132, 1: 21-38.
Nimis P.L. 2016. The lichens of Italy. A second annotated catalogue. EUT, Trieste, 740 pp.
Masson D. 2005. Taxinomie, écologie et chorologie des espèces françaises des genres Hypotrachyna et Parmelinopsis (Ascomycota lichénisés, Parmeliaceae). Cryptogamie, Mycol., 26, 3: 205-263.

Last modified: March, 19, 2022

Project Dryades, Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste - CC BY-SA 4.0