Nash, T.H., Ryan, B.D., Gries, C., Bungartz, F., (eds.) 2004. Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region. Vol 2.
Life habit: algicolous or lichenicolous, some species gall-inducing Ascomata: perithecioid pseudothecia, sessile to immersed, ovoid to globose, with the exposed parts pale to dark brown, in the ostiolar region sometimes with conspicuous plug of gel wall: brown throughout or pigmented only in the ostiolar part, composed of some layers of tangentially arranged flattened cells, with the amorphous pigment irregularly distributed in the intercellular spaces hamathecium: present as paraphysoids and periphyses, or paraphysoids lacking paraphysoids: unbranched or with few ramifications periphyses: unbranched or only basally with some ramifications, with the ends embedded in a hyaline to brown gel asci: fissitunicate, cylindrical to clavate, with thick ascal wall and small or inconspicuous ocular chamber, 8-spored or with reduced spore numbers ascospores: hyaline, simple, fusiform to broadly ellipsoid, smooth, with or without perispore, some species with delicate apical gelatinous appendages Conidiomata: pycnidial, known only from one algicolous species, globose; conidiogenous cells: flask-shaped conidia: simple, ellipsoid, representing probably microconidia Geography: subcosmopolitan, but all species rarely collected Substrate: type species on unidentified coccal cyanobacteria, other species restricted to other free-living cyanobacteria (Scytonema) or on lichenized host genera with cyanobacterial photobionts: Leptogium, Collema, and Placynthium. Notes: The genus Myxophora was originally described monotypically (in a descriptio generico-specifica). At that time it was regarded as a probably lichenized inhabitant of bryophytes (Döbbeler 1978). Later the algicolous life habit with a restriction to cyanobacteria was recognized (Döbbeler 1995). Therefore, it is likely that the lichenicolous taxa also live primarily on the photobiont of the host lichens (Hoffmann and Hafellner 2000), possibly as para-symbionts, for which the occasional formation of galls is an indication. A single species of Myxophora is so far known in the Sonoran region.