Malmidea attenboroughii
Malmidea attenboroughii is a species of corticolous, crustose lichen in the family Malmideaceae. It is known to occur from a single location in the Amazon rainforest of Bolivia.
Taxonomy
The lichen was formally described in 2019 by Martin Kukwa, Beata Guzow-Krzemińska, Magdalena Kosecka, Agnieska Jabłońska, and Adam Flakus. The type specimen was collected from the in the Higher University of San Andrés at an elevation of. It is only known to occur at the type locality, where the habitat is pre-Andean Amazon rainforest. The species epithet honours English broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough, "for his major contributions to the popularization of knowledge about biodiversity and nature protection".
Description
The lichen has a dull greenish-grey, crustose thallus that is up to 0.2 mm thick. Its surface texture is described as "minutely verrucose" to "granulose-isidiate" ; the individual granules are 50–125 μm in diameter. The thallus is surrounded by a thin, white, fibrous prothallus. The apothecia are rounded to irregular in outline, measuring up to 1.0 mm in diameter, with a flat flesh-coloured to brown disc. The margin of the apothecia is thin, cream-coloured to dark grey-brown, and either smooth or verrucose due to the presence of internal chambers in the internal medulla. There are eight ascospores in each ascus. The spores have an ellipsoidal shape and dimensions of 12–16 by 7.5–9 μm. An unknown yellow pigment is present as crystals in the medulla.