The Ectolechiaceae are a family of lichen-forming fungi in the order Lecanorales. The species of this family have a cosmopolitan distribution and have been found in a variety of climatic regions. The family was first described by Alexander Zahlbruckner in 1905, originally for a group of tropical, leaf-dwelling lichens. Its scope has since expanded considerably, and the family now encompasses both tropical genera such as Byssoloma and Calopadia and the large, predominantly temperate-to-arctic genus Micarea. As of 2026, the family contains more than 30 genera and an estimated 470 species. It has also been referred to in some sources as Pilocarpaceae, although current treatments use Ectolechiaceae.
Taxonomy
Ectolechiaceae was circumscribed by Alexander Zahlbruckner in Adolf Engler's influential 1905 work Die Natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien. Zahlbruckner defined the family around small, crust-forming lichens with a single-celled green alga as the partner (then referred to as Protococcus), and described them as producing tiny, round apothecia that begin sunken in the thallus and later sit on the surface, usually without a well-developed margin. He noted that the disc may be flat to shallowly cup-shaped and either exposed from the start or temporarily covered when young by a thin skin that later tears away, and he characterised the internal tissues by well-developed paraphyses and asci bearing one to eight colourless spores ranging from simply septate to strongly multi-septate (muriform) forms. In his treatment the family was confined to tropical, leaf-dwelling lichens (including those on fern fronds), and he subdivided it into several genera on the basis of spore form, paraphysis structure, and whether algal cells occur in the upper or lower apothecial layers, recognising groups such as Asterothyrium, Lopadiopsis, Sporopodium, Lecaniella, Arthotheliopsis, and Actinoplaca.
The family name Ectolechiaceae is based on the generic name Ectolechia, which has largely fallen out...
