Exploring the Sarcogyne phylogeny: three new species and four new reports from Europe and North America (Austria, Czech Republic, Greece, Germany, Romania, USA)

A history of the study of Sarcogyne is explained. Acarospora and Sarcogyne are morphological genus concepts and neither are currently recovered as monophyletic clades. Neither genus has any synapomorphic character or suite of characters distinguishing all species as either Sarcogyne or Acarospora. Three new species are described from Europe and North America: Sarcogyne adscendens (California, U.S.A.), S. lecanorina (Czech Republic), and S. poeltii (Greece). Two sterile taxa with probably functionally infertile apothecia were recovered in the Acarospora badiofusca-A. cervina clade, S. kisonii nom. prov. (Germany), and S. schultzii nom. prov. (Austria). They could replicate by division and fragmentation and S. kisonii also produces conidia. We report Sarcogyne canadensis new for Romania and Europe and Sarcogyne oceanica new for Germany. Acarospora glaucocarpa var. cumulata is a synonym of S. praetermissa. Sequences of nine undescribed Sarcogyne taxa from North America and one from Czech Republic, all known from single collections, are made available for future research.