Taxonomy
The genus Trypetheliopsis was introduced in 1937 by the Japanese lichenologist Yasuhiko Asahina for a distinctive bark-dwelling crustose lichen he named Trypetheliopsis boninensis, based on material from smooth tree trunks in the Bonin Islands of Japan. In his description he placed the genus in the family Trypetheliaceae and characterised it by a thin, crust-like thallus growing on or partly within the bark, a green algal partner of the chroolepoid type, and raised stromata that contain several pale perithecia (flask-shaped fruiting bodies) with a colourless hymenium and branched paraphyses. The sexual spores (ascospores) were described as narrow, spindle-shaped, yellowish and two-celled, with the upper cell longer than the lower, and Asahina also recorded minute ellipsoid asexual spores (conidia) formed in pycnidia scattered across the thallus; he further noted orange-red pigments in the internal tissues that turn deep red to violet in potassium hydroxide solution, which he interpreted as supporting the placement of Trypetheliopsis near but distinct from Trypethelium within the Trypetheliaceae. [4]
In the following decades, the genus fell into disuse in lichenological literature. In 2009, following a study of numerous herbarium specimens of pyrenocarpous lichens collected in Japan, Kashiwadani and colleagues "resurrected" the genus and reclassified several species within it. They also determined that Musaespora, whose type species is Musaespora coccinea, was closely related to Trypetheliopsis, and established Musaespora as a synonym of that genus. [1]
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