Gyalectaria diluta
species of fungus
Gyalectaria diluta is a species of crustose lichen in the family Coccotremataceae, first found in inland rainforests of British Columbia. This pale, crust-forming lichen grows on the bark of conifer trees in very humid old-growth forests, where it forms small patches that bleach the underlying bark to whitish or pale green-grey colours. It is found from British Columbia to Montana and Idaho, typically growing on smooth bark of young cedar saplings beneath mature forest canopies that have remained undisturbed for centuries.
Taxonomy
The species was formally described in 2009 by Curtis Björk, Göran Thor and Tim Wheeler. The holotype, collected from the bark of western redcedar (Thuja plicata) in old-growth forest near St. Paul Lake, Montana, is preserved in the Canadian Museum of Nature. The epithet diluta alludes to the lichen's pale, "diluted" colour. Molecular work in 2010 demonstrated that the "gyalectoid" Pertusaria species form a clade with a sister relationship to Coccotrema and were therefore transferred to the new genus Gyalectaria in family Coccotremataceae.
Morphologically the lichen resembles several eight-spored members of Pertusaria, especially P. carneopallida, P. gyalectoides and P. jamesii. It differs from P. carneopallida in lacking gyrophoric acid (C− versus a pink C+ flash) and in having a far more pronounced perihymenial "muff".
The public source identifies “Gyalectaria diluta” as species of fungus. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gyalectaria, diluta and species.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 1, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q21270960. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2009 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gyalectaria diluta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.