Nash, T.H., Ryan, B.D., Gries, C., Bungartz, F., (eds.) 2004. Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region. Vol 2.
Mycelium: hyaline, internal, inconspicuous Perthecia: dispersed or in small groups, immersed to protruding, spherical to pyriform, with flattened apex, 150-350 µm in diam.; wall: brown, becoming paler towards the center, basally 5-25 µm thick and composed of 3-8 layers of cells, laterally 10-50 µm thick and composed of 3-12 layers of cells, in the ostiolar region enlarged up to 100 µm wide hymenium: lining the perithecial cavity hamathecium: present as paraphysoids and a crown of distinct periphyses paraphysoids: very numerous to almost completely reduced in overmature ascomata, delicate, mostly unbranched and without anastomoses, with indistinct septations, distinctly longer than the asci, 1-1.5 µm thick periphyses: distinctly septate, unbranched or with one ramification, with some anastomoses, 1-3 µm thick asci: ventricose to broadly cylindrical, rounded at the apex, 4565 x 12-20 µm ascospores: pale brown to brown, mostly simple but a few one-septate spores sometimes present (septum if present median and spores not constricted at the septum), 11-18(-21) x 7-13 µm; wall: delicately sculptured when mature (composed of minute warts, mostly constituting reticulate strips or forming a microrugulate surface), with a thin perispore when young Conidiomata: not observed. Hosts: thalli and apothecia of Acarospora fuscata; outside the Sonoran region also on Acarospora glaucocarpa, A. macrospora; commensalic, not distinctly damaging the hosts World distribution: widely distributed in Europe but rare, and from Greenland and Mexico in North America Sonoran distribution: known only from one locality in the Sierra de la Gigante in Baja California Sur. Notes: The only Sonoran specimen of Adelococcus alpestris was reported by Triebel et al. (1991). Beside the unusual host it has markedly narrower ascospores than occurring in collections growing on Acarospora spp. over calcareous rocks. Further investigations are needed to elucidate if it represents a different taxon.