New Iberian records of Caloplaca monacensis (Leder.) Lettau

Three new Iberian records of C. monacensis are reported and described. The material conforms to previous records of C. monacensis, except for the overall paler colour of the thalline exciple and thallus, differing from the C. cerina complex in darker apothecial discs, paler thalline exciple and thallus, and above all, in the granular thallus. In the analyses of the ITS region, sequences of C. monacensis do not form a supported clade, whereas in the Bayesian analysis two separated clades are retrieved, namely a main clade with nearly all the sequences, including a specimen from Soria sequenced here (ARAN-Fungi 19741), and another one that contains the only previous known Iberian collection from Cáceres (van den Boom 38821) that has a 218 b.p. insertion at the end of the 18S region and might belong to a related taxon. It is concluded here that further studies including other genetic markers are needed to understand the divergence of the ITS region within C. monacensis.