A Caribbean epiphyte community preserved in Miocene Dominican amber

Abstract

ABSTRACTFossil tree resins preserve a wide range of animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms in microscopic fidelity. Fossil organisms preserved in an individual piece of amber lived at the same time in Earth history and mostly even in the same habitat, but they were not necessarily parts of the same interacting community. Here, we report on anin situpreserved corticolous community from a piece of Miocene Dominican amber which is composed of a lichen, a moss and three species of leafy liverworts. The lichen is assigned to the extant genusPhyllopsora(Ramalinaceae, Lecanoromycetes) and is described asP.magnaKaasalainen, Rikkinen & A. R. Schmidt sp. nov. The moss,Aptychellites fossilisSchäf.-Verw., Hedenäs, Ignatov & Heinrichs gen. & sp. nov., closely resembles the extant genusAptychellaof the family Pylaisiadelphaceae. The three leafy liverworts comprise the extinct Lejeuneaceae speciesCheilolejeunea antiqua(Grolle) Ye & Zhu, 2010 andLejeunea miocenicaHeinrichs, Schäf.-Verw., M. A. M. Renner & G. E. Lee sp. nov. and the extinct Radulaceae speciesRadula intectaM. A. M. Renner, Schäf.-Verw. & Heinrichs sp. nov. The presence of five associated extinct cryptogam species, four of which belong to extant genera, further substantiates the notion of a stasis in morphotype diversity, but a certain turnover of species, in the Caribbean since the early Miocene.