He named it for Gregorio Piccoli, an 18th-century naturalist he referred to as "the most eminent investigator of the natural world".

[4] In 1927, Alexander Zahlbruckner, an Austrian-Hungarian lichenologist, merged it into the genus Biatorella, based on the fact that they shared a number of characteristics: a crustose thallus, multi-spored asci (the lichen's spore-bearing cells) and apothecia that lack a thalline border.

[5] However, Austrian lichenologist Josef Hafellner separated the two genera out again in 1994, arguing that Biatorella had been rendered "highly heterogenous" by Zahlbruckner's designation.

[7] Most are corticolous or lignicolous, living on the bark of trees or stripped wood; some occur (though only rarely) on mosses.

It typically starts out growth as a free-living mycobiont and becomes lichenised with the photobiont of an unrelated lichen, in this case Pyrrhospora varians.