Foliicolous Lichens of the Fiji Islands

Abstract

Eighteen species of foliicolous lichens have been mentioned earlier from the Fiji Islands in various literature sources and based on collections since 1860. Current records originate from the collections of Göran Thor from 1985 and Sarolta and Tamás Pócs from 2003. G. Thor visited lowland rainforests of Island Viti Levu, S. and T. Pócs collected also in higher elevations (up to ca 1,000 m) in submontane, montane and montane mossy (cloud) forests on Kadavu, Taveuni and Viti Levu Islands. These relatively small collections (of ca 300 and 150 leaves, respectively) resulted in 78 species of the 85 lichen species known today, among them 67 species are new for the foliicolous lichen flora of the area in this publication. New taxa described are Phylloblastia taveuniensis Farkas, Porina kadavuensis Farkas, furthermore the genus Tamasia Farkas (Ramalinaceae) and species Tamasia fijiensis Farkas containing cyanobacterial photobiont.