Elliptochloris Tschermak-Woess.

Elliptochloris Tschermak-Woess. View in CoL

Elliptochloris View in CoL forms ellipsoid to globose, sometimes slightly irregular cells ( Fig. 8 View Figs 1–18 ). Chloroplasts can vary greatly in shape: parietal, striate, or hollow-spherical, bilobed, reticulate, or lobe-less, with or without a pyrenoid. Reproduction is by two types of autospores, either 2–4 large spherical (S-type) or 16–32 smaller elongated (E-type) cells. Both types of autospores often occur simultaneously ( Darienko et al. 2016). The genus currently includes eight accepted species ( Guiry & Guiry 2022). Half of them ( E. bilobata , E. perforata , E. reniformis and E. subsphaerica ) forms lichens ( Voytsekhovich et al. 2011; Darienko et al. 2016; Masumoto 2020).