Symbioses are unique habitats for bacteria. We surveyed the spatial diversity of bacterial communities across multiple individuals of closely related lichens using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) and pyrosequencing. Centers of lichens house richer, more consistent assemblages than species-poor and compositionally disparate lichen edges, suggesting that ecological succ...

This study investigated dispersion and bioaccumulation of mining-related elements from an open-pit olivine mine at Seqi in Southwest Greenland (64° N) using lichens (Flavocetraria nivalis), seaweeds (Fucus vesiculosus), mussels (Mytilus edulis) and fish (Myoxocephalus scorpius). The mine operated between 2005 and 2009, and samples were taken every year within a monitoring area 0-17 km from the ...

introduction: natural products have been the most successful source of potential drug leads. one of them is lichens, which have been used since antiquity as natural sources of drugs. the aim of this study was to investigate the antibacterial and antifungal activity of different extracts of the iranian lichens in ilam province. methods: the aqueous, acetone, and methanol extracts of 6 lichen spe...

BACKGROUND Recent decades have seen a major surge in the study of interspecific variation in functional traits in comparative plant ecology, as a tool to understanding and predicting ecosystem functions and their responses to environmental change. However, this research has been biased almost exclusively towards vascular plants. Very little is known about the role and applicability of functiona...

Domestication of algae by lichen-forming fungi describes the symbiotic relationship between the photosynthetic (green alga or cyanobacterium; photobiont) and fungal (mycobiont) partnership in lichen associations (Goward 1992). The algal domestication implies that the mycobiont cultivates the alga as a monoculture within its thallus, analogous to a farmer cultivating a food crop. However, the in...

Sylvo-pastoral systems are species-rich man-made landscapes that are currently often severely threatened by abandonment or management intensification. At low tree densities, single trees in these systems represent habitat islands for epiphytic cryptogams. Here, we focused on sycamore maple (Acer pseudoplatanus) wooded pastures in the northern European Alps. We assessed per tree species richness...

Lichens, fungi, and bryophytes are frequently referred to as lower plants, non-vascular plants, or cryptogams. All terms are partially incorrect but used for convenience. Strictly speaking only bryophytes are plants. Although lacking conductive tissues, they are photosynthetic. Fungi are not photosynthetic, typically penetrating their substrate as threads of cells. Lichens are fungi in close as...

Human activity is changing air quality and climate in the US Pacific Northwest. In a first application of non-metric multidimensional scaling to a large-scale, framework dataset, we modeled lichen community response to air quality and climate gradients at 1416 forested 0.4 ha plots. Model development balanced polluted plots across elevation, forest type and precipitation ranges to isolate pollu...

fOR the Past 24 yeaRs, BIOlOgIsts haVe studied lichens in the Great Lakes national park units in considerable detail (see map), including floras and chemical element surveys, for biodiversity and air quality assessments. They have studied lichens because they are sentinel species indicating ecosystem health, and because they are excellent biomonitoring and bioindicator species of air quality. T...