Language: English, with trilingual summary in English, French, and Italian
A Second Checklist of the Lichens of Italy aims at filling the gap betwen the first modern catalogue of Italian lichens, published by Nimis in 1993, and its second edition, which is planned for 2006. It contains 15 053 infrageneric epithets subdivided into two distinct, but related lists: 1) The first one is an updated, non-annotated checklist of the lichens reported from Italy up to 31 December 2002. To facilitate comparisons with the previous catalogue, the list also includes several non-lichenised taxa traditionally treated by lichenologists. No mention is made of other non-lichenised fungi that often occur in lichen checklists. 2345 infrageneric taxa are mentioned, 2244 of which are lichenised. The list also includes an appendix with 108 "non-accepted" poorly-known taxa and some dubious records. 2) The second list is a Thesaurus of synonyms, mainly concerning Italian lichens, but also extended to neighbouring areas, especially E and S Europe, and N Africa, which includes 12 600 infrageneric epithets. It is published here not only as an aid to compilers of regional or national checklists, but especially because – once available in the internet and incorporated into information systems – it could be of some help in facilitating connections among distributed databases with different nomenclatural standards.