Melaspilea lentiginosa
Key Details
| Taxonomic Groups: | Fungus or lichen > fungus > Lichenicolous fungus |
| Red List Status: | Near Threatened (Not Relevant) [NT(nr)] |
| D5 Status: | Included in the baseline Red List Index for England (Wilkins, Wilson & Brown, 2022) |
| Section 41 Status: | (not listed) |
| Taxa Included Synonym: | (none) |
| UKSI Recommended Name: | Stictographa lentiginosa |
| UKSI Recommended Authority: | (Lyell ex Leight.) Mudd |
| UKSI Recommended Qualifier: | (none specified) |
| Red List Citation: | Woods & Coppins, 2012 |
| Notes on taxonomy/listing: | (none) |
Criteria
| Question 1: | Does species need conservation or recovery in England? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Present in 20 hectads in GB, and almost entirely confined to SW England and New Forest (BLS 2024). |
| Question 2: | Does recovery/ conservation depend on species-specific actions? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | Dependant on large populations of its host (Phaeographis dendritica) on veteran trees in old growth woodlands. Conservation action needs to target host. |
| Question 3: | At a landscape scale, would the species benefit from untargeted habitat management to increase habitat mosaics, structural diversity, or particular successional stages? |
| Response: | Yes |
| Justification: | The host will respond well to bringing extensive oceanic woodlands into good condition, especially restoring sustainable grazing and maintaining a gladed structure. |
Species Assessment
| Current step on the Species Recovery Curve (SRC): | 4. Autecology and pressures understood |
| Recovery potential/expectation: | Medium-high |
| National Monitoring Resource: | Opportunistic - insufficient |
| Species Comments: | Healthy populations require extensively grazed minimum intervention pasture woodland, restoring grazing to woodlands is difficult and opposed by some policies. |
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Proposed Action: Research into why this parasitic species is so much rarer with apparently stricter requirements than its host; is this related to the population density of the host population and how strong is the apparent preference for host thalli growing on smooth barked veteran trees?
Action targets: 4. Autecology and pressures understood
Action type: Scientific research
Duration: 3-5 years
Scale of Implementation: National
High priority sites:
Comments: Should be relevant to other lichenicolous fungi
Key Action 2
Proposed Action: Produce species dossier including collation of latest information on all known sites outside of the New Forest e.g. status assessment, habitat conditions. This will inform subsequent actions.
Action targets: 5. Remedial action identified
Action type: Scientific research
Duration: 1 year
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 50 sites
High priority sites:
Comments:
Key Action 3
Proposed Action: Advise and support site owners and managers to implement the site-level actions identifies in A1 and A2
Action targets: 7. Best approach adopted at appropriate scales
Action type: Advice & support
Duration: 6-10 years
Scale of Implementation: ≤ 50 sites
High priority sites:
Comments: Positive impacts on many threatened lichen species. Potential to bundle this with other grazing dependant woodland species.
Acknowledgment:
Data used on this website are adapted from Threatened species recovery actions 2025 baseline (JP065): Technical report and spreadsheet user guide (Natural England, 2025). Available here.