Providing Scale to a Known Taxonomic Unknown-At Least a 70-Fold Increase in Species Diversity in a Cosmopolitan Nominal Taxon of Lichen-Forming Fungi.

ABSTRACT: Robust species delimitations provide a foundation for investigating speciation, phylogeography, and conservation. Here we attempted to elucidate species boundaries in the cosmopolitan lichen-forming fungal taxon Lecanora polytropa. This nominal taxon is morphologically variable, with distinct populations occurring on all seven continents. To delimit candidate species, we compiled ITS sequence data from populations worldwide. For a subset of the samples, we also generated alignments for 1209 single-copy nuclear genes and an alignment spanning most of the mitochondrial genome to assess concordance among the ITS, nuclear, and mitochondrial inferences. Species partitions were empirically delimited from the ITS alignment using ASAP and bPTP. We also inferred a phylogeny for the L. pol

SUBMITTER: Zhang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9146994 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature