A new species and new records of Buelloid lichens (Physciaceae, Ascomycota) from the Kermadec Islands

Abstract

Buellia insularicola Elix & de Lange, from the Kermadec Islands and Lord Howe Island, is described as new to science. Amandinea coniops (Wahlenb.) M.Choisy ex Scheid. & H.Mayrhofer, Buellia cranwelliae Zahlbr. and Rinodinella fertilis (Körb.) Elix var. fertilis are new records for the Kermadec Islands The Kermadec Islands are a remote, widely scattered archipelago of 19 subtropical islands, islets and rock stacks located in the southern Pacific Ocean. The islands lie between latitudes 29°S and 31°30’ S and longitudes 177ºW and 179ºW (Sykes 1977), and are the most northerly part of the New Zealand Botanical Region (Allan 1961, de Lange & Rolfe 2010), located 800–1000 km north-east of the North Island of New Zealand. Geologically they are mostly andesitic volcanic islands, with a total land area of 33 square kilometres. An introduction to the geology, landforms, vegetation, climate and lichenological history of the island has been provided by de Lange & Galloway (2015). Two buellioid lichens have previously been reported from the Kermadec Islands, namely Buellia stellulata (Taylor) Mudd (Sykes 1977; Elix & McCarthy 1998; de Lange 2015a,b) and, provisionally Amandinea subbadioatra (C.Knight) Elix & Kantvilas (de Lange 2014). At least one further Buellia was reported at the generic level (de Lange 2014). In this paper, we describe a new species of Buellia sens. lat. as well as reporting three new records for the islands. The new species B. insularicola has also been found on Lord Howe Island, Australia.