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Topic: Pseudochantransis pygmaea

The name Pseudochantransis pygmaea appears to only exist on the NBN Atlas when you google it, and has a taxon group of fungus. Pseudochantransia pygmaea gets more hits and is listed as an algae - this makes more sense as all records on the NBN are from the Rivers Macrophyte Database, but I don't know enough about either group to say this with any confidence!

Charlie Barnes
Information Officer
Greater Lincolnshire Nature Partnership

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Re: Pseudochantransis pygmaea

Pseudochantransia pygmaea is an alga ( Rhodophyta, Acrochaetiaceae). According to Algaebase the current name is Audouinella pygmaea (Kützing) Weber Bosse 1921. It is listed on UKSI under this name, but Pseudochantransis pygmaea is not listed as a synonym.
Ref: https://www.algaebase.org/search/specie … _id=32441.

Pseudochantransis pygmaea appears on the UKSI, but there is no authority given, and classification on NBN is limited to Kingdom and genus. It is not listed on Index Fungorum. Without a provenance it is diffcult to take this further.

Hope this helps

Christine

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Re: Pseudochantransis pygmaea

A curious case. This name came onto the UKSI via the BMS checklist as this supplies the fungal and lichen names to the UKSI. Some algal names are on this list as lichenologists may record the algal partners as well. As neither the BMS or BLS databases held the equivalent field for higher taxonomic group, many species were allocated an incorrect Taxon Group when this was introduced. I have been going through these and most will shortly be corrected.

However this name was missed as there does indeed appear to be an error in the spelling of the name hence queries did not pick it up. I can change the taxon group to an alga but the name looks like it also needs corrected. It was added way back in 2003 and the current lichen list of names does not include it. I will investigate.