Scientists from the University of Liege in Belgium Emmanuel Serusiaux, Nicolas Magain and Dutch scientist Peter van den Boom discovered a new species of lichen Ramalina and named it  Ramalina arsenii in honor of Arsen Gasparyan, Head of Research Group on Lichen Research and Preservation at Takhtajyan Institute of Botany of NAS RA.

The results of the research of European scientists are published in the scientific journal "The Lichenologist" published by the University of Cambridge: “Gasparyan & Sipman 2016 (This new species is named after our distinguished colleague Dr Arsen Gasparyan, who revised the taxonomy of the Ramalina pollinaria group (Gasparyan et al. 2017); he also published an interesting account of epiphytic lichens in Armenia (Gasparyan & Sipman 2016)”.

During his doctoral dissertation Arsen Gasparyan conducted extensive research on lichens in Armenia. "In 2011, when I was just starting my research, 422 species of lichens were known from all over Armenia. By the time my doctoral dissertation was published, that number had risen to 617. As a result of only a few years of intensive research, 195 new species of lichen were discovered in Armenia and 5 new species in the world," Arsen Gasparyan said.