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...

Lichens are traditionally defined as a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae and/or cyanobacteria. This union forms unique structure called the thallus, which attaches to surfaces such rocks tree bark. Recent reports challenge view that lichens comprised of one fungus photobiont, instead suggest they consortium microbes. Much lichen biology remains unknown most our knowledge is limited...

Lichens cover nearly 7% of the earth’s surface and in eastern Canada, lichen woodlands occupy over 300,000 km2. Reindeer lichens (genus Cladonia), are main component they play a crucial role boreal forest ecology. We study, for first time, bacterial community four species reindeer from North America’s forests. Using 16S rRNA gene, we characterize 189 samples. aim to analyse effect host-identity...