Draft Additions to the lichenized fungi biota of North America and Alaska from collections held in the University of Alaska Museum of the North herbarium ( ALA )

The data presented here are based on examination of collections made in the 1970’s mainly by Barbara Murray and held in the University of Alaska Museum of the North herbarium, Fairbanks (ALA). Four species, Micarea inquinans, Placynthium garovaglioi, Protoblastenia lilacina and Trimmatothele perquisita are reported for the first time from North America, and 10 species, Clauzadea metzleri, Clauzadeana macula, Ionaspis obtecta, Lambiella gyrizans, Lemmopsis arnoldiana, Placynthium tantaleum, Poeltinula cerebrina, Protoblastenia incrustans, Rimularia gibbosa and Sagiolechia protuberans are reported for the first time from Alaska. Records of nine other species that are uncommon in Alaska are also reported.


Introduction
Alaska is the largest of the United States, encompassing an area of 1 717 856 km 2 (663 268 mi 2 ), nearly two and a half times larger than Texas, the next largest US state, and almost twice the size of Norway and Sweden combined (913 625 km 2 ).The climate varies from oceanic cool-temperate to continental arctic with vegetation types ranging from coastal temperate rainforest and hyperoceanic heaths to arctic tundra, steppe, and cold desert.Lichens form a major part of the terrestrial ecosystem of the state but are seriously understudied.
A catalog of the Alaskan lichen biota is currently in preparation that presents a synonymized and annotated list of 1725 taxa (Spribille et al. ined.).
In the 1970s, industrial developments, mainly involving exploration for and extraction of minerals and oil, focused new attention on arctic Alaska.In particular, the discovery of the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay on the arctic coast in the late 1960s led to the construction of the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline and the parallel Haul Road (now the Dalton Highway).This road opened the first all-season access to the Arctic Ocean, thus providing unprecedented opportunities for exploration.These industrial developments required impact statements and inventories for compliance with the regulations of the recently enacted National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA) making botanical surveys necessary.At the same time, the expansion of public lands (e.g., Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, etc.) between 1960 and 1980 further facilitated access and made botanical surveys in the Arctic increasing possible.Moreover, the use of helicopters was becoming routine and the ability to reach new remote sites was vastly expanded.
Beginning in 1970, several expeditions that included University of Alaska Museum of the North herbarium, Fairbanks (ALA) botanists Barbara Murray (bryophytes and lichens) and David Murray (vascular plants) and sponsored by such agencies as the US Fish and Wildlife Service, US National Park Service, and US Army Corps of Engineers, Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, were arranged to document the biota of the region.As a result of these expeditions, Barbara Murray collected lichens at numerous Alaskan localities, often several sites in a single day, many of which had not been previously visited by a lichenologist.The area of Murray's collecting spanned northern Alaska, from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the east to the Ogotoruk Creek area in the west and included the areas along the upper Alatna and Killik rivers (now within the Gates of the Arctic National Park) and within the Trans-Alaska Pipeline corridor and the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska.
Unfortunately, very limited resources were available for adequate processing and identification of the vast amount of material collected and much of it was done by Murray herself working as a volunteer (with support) at ALA.Nevertheless, over the next 25 years, Murray sorted and fully curated much of her collections and arranged the remainder, which amounted to several thousand collections, by genus and (or) collection locality.Many of these additional collections were well curated (labelled, packeted, locality included, etc.), whereas the rest were only partially curated (Fig. 1).
In August 2014, the author visited ALA to assist in identifying some of this backlog of undetermined lichen material.In total, 378 collections were studied by the author, but because many supported more than one species (up to seven), over 600 determinations were made, although some only to genus.These included probable species new to science that require further study along with others that are new to North America or Alaska and others that are rarely reported.The collections in these latter groups are reported here.

Materials and methods
Apothecial characteristics were examined by light microscopy on hand-cut sections mounted in water.Thallus and apothecial sections were investigated, and anatomical measurements made, in 10% KOH.Standard chemicals were used for spot-test reactions (Brodo et al. 2001).

Results
Four species new to the North American lichenized-fungi biota were identified plus a further 10 new to Alaska along with nine other taxa that have only rarely been reported from the state.Brief descriptions are provided for the species new to North America and full descriptions of these and the other taxa reported can be found in widely available publications (e.g., Thomson 1997;Smith et al. 2009).

Species new to North America
The following species are not included in the current North American lichen checklist (Esslinger 2016).This is a nonlichenized, lichenicolous species growing on the thallus of Dibaeis baeomyce (L.f.) Rambold & Hertel.It has strongly convex, often aggregated apothecia, a red-brown to dark brown epithecium and hypothecium, a poorly developed exciple and ellipsoid to subglobose ascospores, 8-13 μm × 4-7 μm.Previously known only from France, Germany, and the British Isles (Coppins 2009).
A species of limestone.This species is distinguished from other members of the genus by its pruinose thallus, flat, appressed marginal lobes and 3-7-septate ascospores.Previously reported only from Europe (Gilbert and James 2009).
A species of limestone distinguished from all other species of the genus by the weak K+ reddish reaction (all other species are strongly K+ purple-red) and the often lilac colored hypothecium.Previously known only from Europe where it is probably widespread but overlooked because of its macroscopic similarity to other species of the genus (e.g., Protoblastenia rupestris (Scop.)J. Steiner, Protoblastenia incrustans (DC.)J. Steiner).This monotypic genus differs from Verrucaria in having multispored (>50) asci.Previously known from only a handful of records from NW and central Europe (Ertz and Diederich 2004).(N.B. "weasel" in the label data refers to the track-laying vehicle widely used in the American Arctic at that time, not the small rodent.)

Species new to Alaska
The following species are not included in the current Alaskan lichen checklist (Spribille et al. ined.).

Conclusion
Only a small fraction of the ALA backlog (378 out of approximately 10 000) was studied and this contribution does not attempt to deal with the many collections that could be identified only to genus, several of which probably represent undescribed taxa.It is probable that similar backlogs of unprocessed collections occur in other herbaria with extensive lichen collections from the North American Arctic, for example, Ottawa (CANL) and Quebec (QFA); this study emphasizes the importance of these collections as reservoirs of undocumented terrestrial biodiversity of Arctic environments.

Fig. 1 .
Fig. 1.Some of Barbara Murray's lichen collections in ALA showing the range of curation from brown field site collecting bags containing more than one specimen (bottom left) through newspaper and scrap paper packets containing a single specimen to fully processed herbarium packets (top right).Photo courtesy of Jordan Metzgar.