Deceivers, Laccaria spp., are Mushroom-producing Fungi that form mycorrhizal associations (associations between Fungi and Plants in which the Fungus receives sugars produced by the Plant and the Plant receives nutrients obtained from the soil from the Fungus) with a variety of forest trees. These Fungi are unusual in that they have four mating types (sexes) with each one capable of fertilising any of the others. The common name 'Deceivers' comes from the very variable cap colour of many of these Mushrooms, which makes them hard to identify.
In a paper published in the journal MycoKeys on 27 November 2017, Antero Ramos, Victor Bandala, and Leticia Montoya of the Red Biodiversidad y Sistemática at the Instituto de EcologĂa, describe a new species of Deceiver from a relict Mexican Beech cloud forest in Veracruz State, Mexico.
The new species is named Laccaria squarrosa, where 'squarrosa' means 'rough' or 'scaley' in reference to the surface covering of the Mushrooms. This species produces small orange or brown mushrooms 10-82 mm in diameter.
Laccaria squarrosa, basidiomes (Mushrooms). Scale bars are 10 mm. Ramos et al. (2017).
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