TYPE. UNITED STATES. Alabama, Mobile, on Pyrenula cruenta, 1853, Curtis s.n. (FH, lectotype).
Life form. Lichenicolous fungus.
Description.Thallus absent; photobiont absent. Ascomata scattered on host thallus, lirellate, short, simple to few-branched, 0.3-0.9 x 0.1-0.2 mm, black; disk closed, with lirella tips blunt or short-acute. Hymenium hyaline; paraphyses not always distinct. Asci clavate, 8-spored; ascospores brown, 2-celled, constricted at septum, tips rounded, 15-21 x 6-9 mm.
Hosts: On Anthracothecium and Pyrenula thalli without visibly damaging the host.
Distribution. Southeastern North America, Papua New Guinea; in North Carolina found in the Coastal Plain ecoregion.
Literature
Ertz, D. & P. Diederich (2015) Dismantling Melaspileaceae: a first phylogenetic study of Buelliella, Hemigrapha, Karschia, Labrocarpon and Melaspilea. Fungal Diversity71: 141-164.
Perlmutter, G.B., S.C. Tucker, E. Rivas Plata, P.Clerc & R. Lücking (2015) Melaspilea demissa (Tuck.) Zahlbr. (lichenized Ascomycota) in eastern North America with a key to North American species of Melaspilea s. lat. The Lichenologist47(3): 167-182.
Tuckerman, E. (1872) Genera Lichenum: an Arrangement of the North American Lichens. Amherst, Massachusetts: Edwin Nelson 283 pp. (original description as Opegrapha tribuloides).