Lichens are a ubiquitous terrestrial symbiosis of fungi
with photoautotrophic microorganisms. The identification of the hosted
photoautotrophs is notoriously difficult. Molecular data to clarify evolutionary
relationships on the involved algal and cyanobacterial lineages are
accumulating, but the assignment to species is challenging for various
reasons. One of the challenges is the limited knowledge on the alpha diversity
of photoautotrophs. New lineages are being discovered with increasing
amounts of sequencing. Identification tools could incorporate these aspects,
by routinely updating the assignment process. We propose the establishment
of a classification tool using algal sequence data from public databases.
