At the first ever NWL virtual symposium in March I presented a puzzling mystery lichen and we had a contest to see who could guess what the genus (powerpoint attached), which was hotly debated by all who had seen the specimen. Joe Di Meglio has sequenced the ITS for it and I built a little tree with the results.

The question was: To what genus does the mystery lichen belong? We had guesses for half a dozen genera. And the correct answer is ... clearly... Esslingeriana!

There is a small difference between this one and the two existing Esslingeriana idahoensis sequences in GenBank, so it remains to be seen whether this falls within the normal variation for that species, or whether the mystery lichen is actually a new species. If you go out looking for it, the key difference from normal E. idahoensis is that much of the lower surface of the mystery specimen was white, in contrast to the normal black of E. idahoensis.

As for prizes... the guesses are recorded in the transcript of the chat during the presentation, and I don't have that, but winners will be duly acknowledged here!