Meruliopsis taxicola is often referred to as a member of Gloeoporus due to its morphological similarities with Gloeoporus dichrous. However, "Gloeoporus taxicola" has stronger affinity with Meruliopsis at a microscopic level, lacking the clamp connections that make Gloeoporus spp. unique among the Irpicaceae.

• Note: two species of Gloeoporus s.s. lack clamp connections and form a clade, but can be included with the rest of the Gloeoporus spp. while maintaining monophyly in the genus.

More importantly, Gloeoporus is polyphyletic if it contains any of the following species:

• Gloeoporus taxicola
• Gloeoporus cystidiatus (Will be dealt with in a separate taxon change)
• Gloeoporus guerreroanus(")

Allowing Meruliopsis to be assimilated as a subset of Gloeoporus spp. is also insufficient; doing so would cause Gloeoporus to become highly paraphyletic, requiring the inclusion of species such as Ceriporia spissa, Leptoporus mollis, and many other species (as well as entire genera) to achieve monophyly.

Please check out the work done by Jung et al. in "Revision of the taxonomic status of the genus Gloeoporus (Polyporales, Basidiomycota) reveals two new species." (2018)

It includes a nicely constructed phylogenetic tree demonstrating the need for the revision.

The affinity of Gloeoporus taxicola with Meruliopsis was also previously discussed in:

• Binder M et al. (2013) – "Phylogenetic and phylogenomic overview of the Polyporales"
• Jia et al. (2014) – "Taxonomy and phylogeny of Ceriporia (Polyporales, Basidiomycota) with an emphasis of Chinese collections"