In order to find new actinomycete resources for discovering new drug leads, the actinomycete associated with lichens was studied. Three species of lichen samples were collected from 3 locations of Yunnan. Actinomycetes in the samples were isolated with 11 media, and identified with 16S rRNA gene sequence procedures. Bacteria of two of the three species were sequenced by using 454 pyrosequencing...

Polychlorodibenzeno-dioxins and polychlorodibenzeno-furans (PCDD/Fs) are considered among the most toxic compounds on earth. The aim of the present study was to evaluate atmospheric PCDD/F deposition and identify the areas with greater deposition of these compounds in an important industrialized and urbanized region of Portugal, using lichens as biomonitors. For this purpose, samples of the lic...

Wooded pastures with ancient trees were formerly abundant throughout Europe, but during the last century, grazing has largely been abandoned often resulting in dense forests. Ancient trees constitute habitat for many declining and threatened species, but the effects of secondary woodland on the biodiversity associated with these trees are largely unknown. We tested for difference in species ric...

The evaluation of air quality is an important topic. It is well known that lichens have a set of characteristics that make them well suited for biomonitoring purposes. Sampling lichen diversity is not as expensive as chemical analysis and for this reason a dense sampling grid is possible thus reducing the costs of analysis. Lichen diversity can be used to identify more disturbed areas, resultin...

Lichens are commonly described as a mutualistic symbiosis between fungi and "algae" (Chlorophyta or Cyanobacteria); however, they also have internal bacterial communities. Recent research suggests that lichen-associated microbes are an integral component of lichen thalli and that the classical view of this symbiotic relationship should be expanded to include bacteria. However, we still have a l...

Lichens can either disperse sexually through fungal spores or asexually through vegetative propagules and fragmentation. Understanding how genetic variation in lichens is distributed across a landscape can be useful to infer dispersal and establishment events in space and time as well as the conditions needed for this establishment. Most studies have sampled lichens across large spatial distanc...