The phylogeny of the subfamily Xanthorioideae (Teloschistaceae) is re-analysed based on ITS, LSU and mtSSU sequences, including a new set of specimens representing 31 genera, of which five are proposed as new: Golubkovia, Igneoplaca, Langeottia, Scythioria and Verrucoplaca. Two new species, Ovealmbornia volkmarwirthii from South Africa and Gondwania sejongensis from Antarctica are described, illustrated and compared with closely related taxa. Eleven new combinations are proposed in the genera Calogaya, Cerothallia, Flavoplaca, Gondwania, Igneoplaca, Scythioria and Verrucoplaca, but the status of four earlier established genera, Pachypeltis, Parvoplaca, Solitaria and Xanthopeltis, remains uncertain and needs further studies.
Key words: new genera, Golubkovia, Igneoplaca, Langeottia, phylogeny, Scythioria, Teloschistaceae, Xanthorioideae, Verrucoplaca
INTRODUCTION
The lichen family Teloschistaceae has been divided in three subfamilies, namely Caloplacoideae, Teloschistoideae and Xanthorioideae (Arup et al. 2013, Gaya et al. 2012). The subfamily Xanthorioideae, proposed by Gaya et al. (2012) was further subdivided into one teloschistoid and one xanthorioid clade, but the teloschistoid clade was segregated as a separate subfamily, the Teloschistoideae (Arup et al. 2013). The subfamilies Caloplacoideae and Teloschistoideae were recently revised by us (Kondratyuk et al. 2013c, 2014), and included 17 and 15 genera, respectively.
Xanthorioid lichens, i.e. the foliose species of the subfamily Xanthorioideae, have been revised in several papers, and a number of new genera described with the phylogeny based on molecular characters (Fedorenko et al. 2009, 2012, Kondratyuk and Karnefelt 1997, 2003).
Nineteen genera of the subfamily Xanthorioideae were accepted by Arup et al. (2013) based primarily on ITS sequences, although 12 of the genera were based on a more complete set of sequences from three loci. Several of the proposed genera were represented by only single samples. In the present study, the Xanthorioideae has been reanalysed including a total of 94 species and 520 sequences. The molecular phylogeny is compared with morphological, anatomical and secondary chemical characters, and has resulted in the proposal of the five new genera, Golubkovia, Igneoplaca, Langeottia, Scythioria and Verrucoplaca. Nevertheless, the status of the genera Pachypeltis, Parvoplaca, Solitaria, proposed by Arup et al. (2013) and Xanthopeltis, described by Santesson (1949), remains uncertain.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
The methods used for extraction, amplification and phylogenetical analyses are described in previous papers (Fedorenko et al. 2009, 2012, Kondratyuk et al. 2013a, b, c).
Genomic DNA was obtained from fresh samples and herbarium specimens. Voucher specimens included in the phylogenetic analyses are listed in the Appendix.
Three regions were targeted for this study: the ITS1/ITS2 region using the primers ITS1 and ITS4 (Fedorenko et al. 2009) using the primer ITS1F (Gardes and Bruns 1993), the 28S LSU using the primer LR5 (Vilgalys and Hester 1990), and the 12S mtSSU using the primers mtSSU1-mtSSU3R and mtSSU2R (Zoller et al. 1999).
Automated reaction clean up and visualisation of the results was performed at the Lichen Bioresource Genome Sequencing and Analysis Core Facility of the Korean Lichen Research Institute, Sunchon National University, South Korea.
Sequence fragments were subjected to BLAST searches for the first verification of their identities. They were assembled and edited using Sequencher...