Lepidostroma vilgalysii

I recently had a paper published in Mycological Progress with Jessie Uehling and Matt Smith in which we described a new species of lichen.  This is a special lichen because it is one of the few species in the Basidiomycetes that forms an intimate association with an alga (note that >98% of lichen-forming fungi belong to the Ascomycetes).  The species was first collected by Rytas Vilgalys of Duke University, so naturally we named it Lepidostroma vilgalysii.  There is a "DukeTODAY" post about the species, which was followed up by a podcast.  There was even a Q&A with Dr. Rytas Vilgalys, and an announcement was posted in The Herald-Sun.

Here's a shot of the species in the field:

Notice the yellow clubs (these are the fungal reproductive structures) and the tiny light-green white-rimmed squamules on the soil (these are the lichenized part with the sterile fungus and the algae).

- Brendan

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References

Hodkinson, B. P., J. K. Uehling, and M. E. Smith. 2012. Lepidostroma vilgalysii, a new basidiolichen from the New World. Mycological Progress doi:10.1007/s11557-011-0800-z.
View publication (website)

Hodkinson, B. P., J. K. Uehling, and M. E. Smith. 2012. Data from: Lepidostroma vilgalysii, a new basidiolichen from the New World. Dryad Digital Repository doi:10.5061/dryad.j1g5dh23.
View data and analysis file webportal (website)

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P.S. I found this interesting blog post that gives the Lepidostroma vilgalysii article as an example for citation of data packages associated with articles. The public archiving of all data and analysis files associated with published results is extremely important (but often neglected), and is analogous to the archiving of physical resources such as specimens and cultures.