The genus Lejeunea in Miocene amber from the Dominican Republic

Abstract

A sterile liverwort inclusion in a piece of Miocene amber from the Dominican Republic is described and assigned to the extant genus Lejeunea. The inclusion resembles a complex of extant American Lejeunea species (L. angusta, L. aphanes, L. cladogyna, L. urbanii) that share autoecy, a small size, and ovate to obovate leaf lobes with rounded apices. A definite assignment to one of these species is impossible due to inacessibility of several diagnostically relevant characters such as perianths and oil bodies. The inclusion is clearly different from the extinct Lejeunea palaeomexicana; hence at least two different Lejeunea species occured in the Miocene of Middle America.