The foliicolous lichen flora of Mexico. V. Biogeographical affinities, altitudinal preferences, and an updated checklist of 293 species

Abstract

An inventory of foliicolous lichens in Mexican lowland and montane rainforest revealed a total of 288 species, 238 of which are new records for the country, raising the number of reported lichen species to c. 1800. Among the new records, there are 29 recently described species and four new records for the Neotropics and the Americas, while five taxa are for the first time reported for Central America. The 293 species now known from Mexico comprise nearly two-thirds pantropical to cosmopolitan or intercontinentally distributed taxa, whereas little more than one-third are Neotropical or American, and only 6% are potentially endemic to the country. A comparison with other lowland and montane rainforest sites in Guatemala, Costa Rica and Ecuador shows that on average lowland sites have twice as many species as montane sites. Also, the differentiation in species composition between lowland and montane sites within the same region is more pronounced (63–75% similarity) than that between adjacent regions (96–99% similarity for lowland sites and 83–87% similarity for montane sites). This means that altitudinal preferences affect species composition more strongly than geographical differentiation. The latter is a function of distance, however, while Mexican and Guatemalan lowland (montane) sites share 96% (83%) of the species, these values drop to 74% (72%) when comparing Mexico with Ecuador. Nevertheless, overall floristic similarity is very high, with the lowest value of 54% shared species found between Mexican lowland and Costa Rican montane forest.

The Cryptothecia candida complex revisited

“…Cryptothecia inexspectata was found to contain gyrophoric acid, the thallus and ascomata reacting C+ orange-red, and since the same reaction was detected in C. candida, Thor (1997) concluded that the latter species also contained gyrophoric acid. Lücking 1995Lücking , 1998Lücking , 1999Herrera-Campos et al 2004), and spot tests and TLC revealed that gyrophoric acid was absent from these populations. Lücking 1995Lücking , 1998Lücking , 1999Herrera-Campos et al 2004), and spot tests and TLC revealed that gyrophoric acid was absent from these populations.…”

“…However, in the framework of a Flora Neotropica monograph on foliicolous lichens, the first author studied a large number of collections reported from the Neotropics (e.g. Lücking 1995Lücking , 1998Lücking , 1999Herrera-Campos et al 2004), and spot tests and TLC revealed that gyrophoric acid was absent from these populations.…”

Three new species ofGraphis(Ascomycota:Ostropales:Graphidaceae) from Mexico, with updates to taxonomic key entries for 41 species described between 2009 and 2013

“…1113 micro- and macrolichen species for Mexico. This contrasts with the rest of the country, where the lichenological knowledge is still fragmented or incomplete and lacks floristic and taxonomic treatments, especially for crustose lichens, except for the foliicolous species from its tropical areas (Herrera-Campos et al 2004 b ; Lücking 2008).…”

“…Mexico's geographical and climatic setting generates a wide variety of diverse ecosystems (Ramamoorthy et al 1993), which make it one of the six megadiverse countries in the world (Mittermeier 1988). The Mexican lichen biota is estimated at between 3000 and 5000 species (Herrera-Campos & Lücking 2003; Lücking et al 2009 a ), of which only about half are reported in the literature (B. D. Ryan, T. H. Nash III & M. A. Herrera-Campos, unpublished data; Sipman & Wolf 1998; Herrera-Campos & Lücking 2002, 2003; Nash et al 2002, 2004, 2007; Herrera-Campos et al 2004 a , b , 2005).…”

Una especie nueva y peculiar de Graphis (Ascomycota: Ostropales: Graphidaceae) de la selva alta perennifolia de Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz, México

“…Sin embargo, es evidente la carencia de información biológica acerca de distintos procesos ecológicos y de ciertos componentes de la biota (Dirzo et al, 1997). En particular, el estudio de la biota liquénica de esta región, iniciado recientemente, se ha enfocado en la diversidad, ecología y biogeografía de los líquenes foliícolas, los más abundantes y diversos en la selva alta perennifolia (Bárcenas-Peña, 2004, 2007Herrera-Campos, Huhndorf y Lücking, 2005;Herrera-Campos, Lücking, Pérez, Campos, Martínez-Colín y Bárcenas-Peña, 2004; Herrera-Campos, Martínez-Colín, Bárcenas-Peña y Herrera-Campos y Lücking, 2002). No obstante, el conocimiento sobre los líquenes costrosos corticícolas aún es limitado.…”