In the description in 1996, Horak et al. state the species is likely in,  “subgen. Flammuloides A. H. Smith and Hesler, sect. Spumosae A. H. Smith and Hesler)

An ITS sequence derived from a citizen science project was published in 2022 (MW018900; https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/32077652), but I am not aware of any phylogenetic study incorporating this sequence.

BLASTing the sequence via NCBI, GlobalFungi, and UNITE do not provide any high matches by sequence identity, indicating this may be an endemic species to the Hawaiian Islands.

The species is only known to occur in native, wet, montane forests in the Hawaiian Islands and is likely endemic to the archipelago.

Native, wet, montane forests of the Hawaiian Islands.

The population size and trends are currently unknown. The species is known from many collections and is regularly reported on citizen science platforms (24 observations on iNaturalist; 23 since 2019). Despite this, it’s habitat is restricted to a single forest type in the Hawaiian Islands and this habitat is under threat.

The species is a saprotroph, producing basidiomata on mosses, and various native woody plants in wet, montane, native forests in the Hawaiian Islands, including Metrosideros polymorpha.

Although large areas of native, wet, montane forest exist in the Hawaiian Islands, many threats exist to this ecosystem: invasive plants replacing native species (Potter et al. 2023), invasive pathogenic fungi killing M. polymorpha (Fortini et al. 2019), one of the keystone species in this ecosystem and a substrate of P. peleae, among others.

There are no conservation actions in place specific to P. peleae. Conservation actions to preserve or restore wet, montane, native forests would benefit this species.

Population size and trends.

n/a