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List of lichens of Brazil

Brazil is recognised as having an exceptionally rich documented lichen biota. In 2025, a nationwide checklist by André Aptroot and co-authors accepted 4,828 Brazilian taxa, consisting of 4,799 species and 29 infraspecific taxa (that is, forms, varieties, and subspecies). This was about twice the number listed in the 2002 national checklist, a result of both intensified collecting in recent decades and renewed taxonomic scrutiny of previously reported names.

Brazilian lichen collecting has a long recorded history, but knowledge accumulated unevenly for much of that time. Early work was concentrated in a limited set of comparatively well-studied areas, especially Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Rio Grande do Sul. The evidence assembled by Aptroot and colleagues suggests that roughly 10,000 specimens had been gathered by the beginning of the 20th century, much of them through the efforts of botanists such as Juan Ignacio Puiggari and Auguste François Marie Glaziou, followed later by important collections made by the lichenologists Gustaf Oskar Andersson Malme and Edvard August Vainio. Collection activity increased substantially during the 20th century, adding about 50,000 further specimens, and accelerated again in the 21st century as Brazilian specialists established research groups in different parts of the country and extended survey work much more widely.

Much of the recent rise in recorded diversity stems from the wider geographical coverage achieved over the last 15 years, as lichen surveys were extended across almost all Brazilian states. Aptroot and colleagues assembled their checklist from published records tied to specimens, drawing on older and newer literature, regional inventories, and postgraduate theses, rather than accepting names solely from online occurrence portals or herbarium databases. The work is focused on lichenized fungi, but it also includes a small number of closely related non-lichenized ascomycetes that have traditionally been treated by lichenologists; lichenicolous fungi (fungi that grow on lichens), which are often included in lichen checklists, were left outside its scope.

The present list is based on the accepted taxa treated by Aptroot et al. (2025), and additional reports published since then. The abbreviated codes following each species name show the Brazilian states from which that taxon has been reported, and in the source these acronyms are arranged by region in geographical sequence rather than alphabetically. A bolded "B" indicates that the name is based on original type material from Brazil. This list includes both fully accepted species and taxa treated as provisionally accepted. Where a name is marked "provisionally accepted", it is retained for practical use in the checklist even though its generic placement or final taxonomic treatment remains unsettled and may later be revised.

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

References