Eremothecella ajaysinghii
Eremothecella ajaysinghii is a species of foliicolous lichen in the family Arthoniaceae. It was described from specimens collected in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. It forms a thin, greenish to whitish-grey crust on living leaves and produces dark, often pale-dusting fruiting bodies. The species was one of several members of Eremothecella documented during a modern survey of the archipelago's evergreen and mangrove forests.
Taxonomy
Eremothecella ajaysinghii was formally described in 2019 by T.A.M. Jagadeesh Ram and G.P. Sinha, with the holotype collected in Kalara Forest, North Andaman Island, at 62 m elevation on 23 April 2011. The epithet honours the late Ajay Singh for his contributions to Indian lichenology.Description
The thallus of Eremothecella ajaysinghii is thin, matt and, forming dispersed to continuous rounded or irregular patches 10–40 mm across, greenish grey to whitish grey, typically 12–25 micrometres thick. The cells occur in radiating plates and are rectangular. Ascomata are few to many, rounded to irregular, nearly flat to slightly raised, dark brown to black and usually moderately to densely, 0.4–1.1 mm across and 45–80 μm thick. In section: pale to dark brown and ; hymenium pale brown ; pale brown. are branched and anastomosing. Asci are, and contain eight spores. The ascospores are colourless at first, later becoming brownish and slightly wrinkled, and gently curved, with the end cell enlarged and only slight constrictions at the septa; they have 8–10 cross-walls, occasionally up to 11, and typically measure 36–50 × 8–10 μm, though they can range from 33 to 52 × 7–12 μm.Asexual structures are frequent: pycnidia are flattened, black, oval to irregular. Conidia are long, thread-like, multiseptate and slightly wider at one end, measuring 70–125 × 1.5–2.0 μm. Standard spot tests on the thallus are negative, and thin-layer chromatography detected no secondary metabolites.