 Good evening, everyone. Can you hear me okay? Good. Welcome to our talk by Dr. Ron Butler on lichens. I think this is going to be very interesting. I imagine, like me, a lot of you have seen them growing around and wondered. And I think they're, they're going to be, we're going to learn a lot. I wanted to let you know we will have our spring series of talks starting in March. We're working on topics. We don't have anything definite. We're looking at some things about climate change and various other things, but we will be starting those in March and you'll be getting information about that. I also wanted to say that we're looking for more people on the board. If any of you are interested, we'd be happy to talk with you. It's not real demanding, but we could use some more help. And I guess that's all the housekeeping sort of things. And I'm going to let Ron just start teaching us about those wonderful things that grow in our environment. Ron. Alrighty, you guys can all hear me. I hope I was soon as a yes. I have to start in the spirit of full disclosure by confessing that I am not a likened biologist. Those of you who are familiar with me. So I spent the first half of my career studying seabirds in Maine, Newfoundland and Antarctica. And I've spent the second half of my career for about the last 25 years studying insects, predominantly damselflies and dragonflies and a variety of native pollinators. I've been associated with these three statewide citizen science initiatives. I consider myself kind of a recreational likenologist. I was looking for something to do during the winter months when there are no birds or insects around or very few. And some friends introduced me to like it. And I was quickly, as I am drawn to all other taxonomic groups, charmed by the immense diversity of lichens that you can find right in your backyard, much less the entire state of Maine. So I learned a lot from friends who were much more knowledgeable about lichens than I am. I spent a lot of time with the then paper copy of Jim and Pat Heinz field guide to lichens and Mason hails how to know the lichens book. And I'm going to also point out that while some of the photos that I'll show you are my photos others will be just taken from wiki Commons. And what I'm just doing now is kind of trying to give you a feel for the diversity of lichens we have right here in Maine. And so when Nancy asked me to give this presentation, not being a lichen specialist. But having looked at lichens for about 25 years and had students do research with lichens and so forth. I decided the presentation I would put together tonight would be one that assumes that you're a complete novice in terms of your understanding of lichen biology. So basically I'm going to give you some lichen basics. I'm going to talk about lichen growth forms. I'm going to define what lichen is three different times in this presentation and you'll see why. I'll talk a little bit about lichen reproduction. Like in diversity and rarity. Like in conservation. Tools the amateur like analogist should have a key to the, the most important characteristics for lichen identification to get you started. And then I'll just go over briefly some lichen resources. So let's begin with some basic lichen factoids. First of all, first definition of what lichen is. Lichens are simply fungi that have become lichenized. And I know that's not a terribly descriptive definition of a lichen but bear with me. So, in terms of the evolution of lichens, it was long thought as they are primary colonists I newly exposed landforms that lichens probably preceded. Terrestrial plants in terms of the evolutionary sequence. But recent studies have now pretty much nailed down that lichens evolved after vascular plants, probably around 400 million years before present. Again, let's go back to my definition lichens are fungi that have become lichenized. So that presumes that fungi were around before lichens first put in appearance. And the amber. You see on the right side of the screen is a lichen from about somewhere in the vicinity of 25 to 35 million years ago. And they have a long fossil history. They don't fossilize very well, but when we get fossils we were pretty good about dating. Another facet of lichen evolution is they don't all stem from a common ancestor. It looks like lichenization evolved in 10, at least 10 different fungal lineages. In terms of evolutionary biology lichens per se are sort of a holly phyletic group they have multiple origins. How many like us do we have on the planet. Well depends on the source you can find estimates as low as about 13,000 to estimates of 18,000 that probably more than that that are discovered. If we consider North America if we consult the most recent. Lichen. List for North America I get 5,283 species. If we think about how many lichens are in Maine well if you look at the book by Pat and Jim Heinz. They have 461 documented species more species may have been found since 2007. And by Seward 2017 notes in various forays around Eagle Hill on the Downey's coast at least 600 species. Bennett and Wettmore found 400 species in Acadia National Park alone. And the Heinz acknowledge that, in addition to the macro lichens that they, and I'm not sure you see my cursor here. Do you see my cursor Nancy. In addition to the macro lichens they documented with the additional micro lichens possibly as many as 1200. Go ahead. We can see your cursor I had to get the. Okay, so you can see it right now. We also trying to decide. Okay, so Nancy I just want to make sure I have it on the right screen for you guys can you see my cursor moving now. We could a moment ago. But no, there it's back. Yeah, I just had it. All right, I've got the right screen. So we're good. It's disappeared again. Oh no, there it is. If I move it, it will reappear. In terms of lichens prevalence on the planet, the estimates in terms of the Earth's surface cover is 78% and that may seem pretty high. I mean if you look around main you see seven or 8% of the state covered with lichens. But you have to remember that lichens are much more prevalent in some regions. So if we look at the boreal biome, the boreal forest biome, we find that 20% of that biome by biomass is lichens and 95% of the ground cover. So, so they really are well represented beyond what you might expect. Looking around the state of Maine lichens have very slow growth rates, some under a millimeter per year some maybe as high as two millimeters in here. So that means if you look at a dinner plate size, or even a saucer sized lichen on the side of the tree, a tree it may be older than you are. In fact, the determination of lichen growth rates has led to the science of lichenometry by which measuring the average size of lichens on a given rock face. You can estimate when that rock face was first either cleaved off a larger rock or unburied or however it came to be exposed. So what's the role of lichens on the planet. Well, they have an extraordinarily long list of ecosystem services. They are as I've already alluded to primary colonists, a new landform new soils new rock faces lichens are usually the first things to cause. They carry on photosynthesis so they're involved in the carbon cycle. They're important in terms of soil formation. In the desert regions, the kind of bio crusts that lichens and bacteria form help reduce soil erosion due to wind and or water. Stom lichens, because they contain cyanobacteria are involved in nitrogen fixation. lichens are what we call Poichelohydric organisms they can't regulate their water balance. I'm like you. It's sort of like a sponge, you dump water on it, the tissues fill up with water, and then the water slowly evaporates. And the fact that the water slowly evaporates from the lichen means that lichens that are up in the canopy of trees help moderate the humidity within the camera. lichens are food for a vast variety of vertebrate and invertebrates, including humans by the way. Reindeer, deer, caribou, flying squirrels, a number of kinds of invertebrates, snails, slugs, lots of things eat lichens. lichens are also used as nest material by our own flying squirrels in the state of Maine, but also in a variety of bird nests. Now this is not a Maine bird, but you can see the lichens here in the outer wall of the bird's nest. lichens can also be used for camouflage. Now that may be why these birds include these lichens, but other animals really regard lichens as very important in terms of camouflage. And the peppered moth is one of those. And the peppered moth is not the black moth that you see that's the black morph of the peppered moth, the moth is actually right there. And you can see how it that crypticity the moth has evolved really matches the lichens in fact. And the whole story of the industrial melanism that you may be familiar with is the industrial revolution to hold in Europe, particularly in Britain. There were lots of particulates and sulfur dioxide put in the air, and some lichens are very susceptible to that and lichens died off in Britain. And as a result, the crypticity of the normal peppered moth morph was no longer advantage, rather the dark morph had the advantage. And sure enough, we look at collections from those age you can see that the peppered morph disappears actually, or is greatly reduced than the collections contain more and more of the black moth. And again, predation may also have entered in here too, but predation was probably picking off these guys, bird predators, and mostly these guys were available. And as air quality improved in Great Britain and behind the improvements in air quality lichens slowly started regenerating guess what this form bounces back again, and starts supplanting this form because now there are lichens for that crypticity to work. So camouflage. And finally habitat, lots of little things live in and on lichens, including some micro insects, protozoans and notably tardigrades and nematodes, you can go off to almost any tree around you. Peel some lichens off, put it in spring water for 24 hours and you will find these critters. So, again, a pretty impressive list of ecosystem services. What about humans lichens. Well, there are a number of cultures who use lichens in food as food or as beverage lichens have been used as diapers and actual clothing people actually leave things out of some of the of the fruticose lichens. You can find all sorts of books on lichens dies. Lichens are used some lichens are using perfume manufacturer, folk medicines, recent perfume 52 genre of lichens are used by various cultures around the world and almost every culture has some medicinal or multiple medicinal roles for lichens from headaches to vision problems and gastrointestinal issues and heart problems and, and cancer and you can you name it you can find some culture that believes some particular lichen is good for that particular element. In fact, there is lots of medical interest in lichens because lichens produce more than 800 very unique substances. And some of those substances have very potent antibacterial anti fungal or anti viral properties. Some of them have insecticidal or anti protozoan properties. There's some interest in some of these substances in terms of their anti inflammatory and possible anti cancer application. There's there's some real substance to these focuses of lichens in terms of some of these unique substances produced by lichens, mostly as secondary metabolites. Again, from our perspective lichens are used as ecological indicators. Air quality is one of those study that was very high in the late 90s was an Italian study that showed this remarkable link in Italy between lichen diversity, very high in the north and declining as you go south with cancer mortality, very low in the north increasingly high as you go south. There's a variation between high cancer mortality and low lichen diversity, which has nothing directly to do with lichens, but everything to do with the quality of the air that's producing the higher cancer mortality, because lichens act like sponges in the dirty dishwasher after you do the dirty dish pan to do the dishes, you put it on the shelf and you don't wring it out the water evaporates but anything that was in the dishwasher still in the sponge. That's the same thing like it. So they will absorb any number of air pollutants, including aerosolized heavy metals and unfortunately radio nuclides. In the Chernobyl incident, the radioactive material that was put into the atmosphere was absorbed by many lichens in Scandinavia. And as a result, the lap landers had to slaughter many of the reindeer herds because they had been consuming radioactive lichens. And the federal US federal government has had a program since 1990 called the forest health monitoring program. And that's a program that takes place nationwide, there are there are plots all throughout the United States and those plots are monitored every year. So that's just your field for the Northeast where some of these plots are including plots in Maine. And while they're looking at all sorts of parameters having to do with the health of forests, one of the things they're also monitoring are lichens. And so that's been going on for quite a while and there's a quite a distinct positive relationship with air pollution related to lichens in terms of nitrogen and sulfur, and the percent of those pollutants that are found in lichen tissues. So it's again a very potent indicator of air quality. One of the oldest creatures on the planet right now may in fact be a lichen. Rhizocarpin geographicum the map lichen is a very common lichen find that in Maine anytime you go any place where the rock surfaces have been exposed for some time, particularly above tree line you'll find this one. This is really bright lime green. This is not the particular lichen, but there's one of these lichens that's been dated at over 8,000 years of age. Lichens can get quite long. This species used to be known as Usnia longissima it's now delico Usnia longissima with useless beard has been measured at being more than 20 feet and we have a number of species of Usnia in the state and you can see this kind of filamentous thing particularly around evergreens particularly once you get up in the mountains. So where do lichens grow what are their substrate characteristics well you pick a surface and we can probably find lichens that grow there. They grow on tree bark they're lichens that grow on rock surfaces they're lichens that only grow on dead wood, lichens that grow on building materials, lichens that grow in freshwater lichens that grow in seawater lichens that will colonize rubber and glass and metal lichens that will even colonize the leaves of some perennial species. Normally, groups of lichens tend to grow on a single substrate so there's a host of species that tend to grow only on trees, but there are some species that cross boundaries. So you can find some species that grow on trees that will also grow on rock, you can find some of the things that grow on rock that will also colonize synthetic materials. And growing on a whale skull lichens are extremophiles. They're global colonists of almost any surface. They are resistant to heat, cold and drought, and I'll come back to why that is. So the lichens on the left are growing on a rock surface 15 miles outside of Las Vegas in the desert. And here on the right I took during my first research tour in Antarctica, that's the Ross ice shelf, and you can see the lichens that have colonized this bear rocky substrate near the shoreline. Lichens have even gone to space. We find that the European Space Agency's photon M2 mission actually took two different species of lichen into space. Again, rhizocarpin and xanthoria there's orange lichen. When in space, they had the lichens affixed to the canister on the outside of the vessel. They opened it up to hard vacuum and radiation for 15 days of the mission. They then sealed it back up so the lichens wouldn't be harmed during reentry. And when they got it back to earth, the lichens were fine and continued metabolizing normally. That's the definition of extremophile. So when we talk about a lichen, and this is a very common lichen in this area in Maine. We talk about the body as being the thalus. So anytime you use that term that's why I'm referring to. We talk about in certain lichens, these little lobe like things as well lobes. Okay. So in this growth form that looks like a leaf will always have lobes associated with the thalus. So when you think about growth forms of lichens, we generally recognize three or four, although in some sources you'll find they break that further subdivide them into six or seven. I'm just going to stick with the four. The first group are the ones that are leaf like called folios lichens. And all these are common in in Maine. The second form is shrub like, and these are the fruticose lichens. The third form are characterized usually by these very upright stocks bearing fruiting bodies. They're actually characterized by the thalus which is down here. And they're called and I'm going to show you a blow up of this. These are called squamules. So the thalus is actually composed of these squamules, they're attached at one end and the other end of each squamule is free and they don't get much bigger than this. So these are there for the squamulose lichens. All right, so the folios lichens, the fruticose lichens and the squamulose lichens together represent what we call macro lichens. The micro lichens are represented by crustose lichens. And crustose lichens basically have a thalus that's difficult to resolve. I mean, this is the thalus but it looks like it's spray painted on this limb. And these things are spore bearing structures. Same here, you can see the thalus but it looks like it's just spray painted on the bark. And again, these are spore bearing structure. And then you can see any reproductive structure, it just looks like spray paint spot. This one, you can sort of see some structure. This is a device, it's a pink lichen that's very easy to spot as you're driving along the road, especially if it's been wet. Again, here's the thalus of this crustose lichen. This is a soy lichen and against some rock dwelling lichens. But again, you know, you can't, you can't unlock the folios lichen. You have to, if you want to collect these, you need a hammer and a rock chisel. All right, so my second definition of what lichens are. Well, I told you that they were fungi that have become lichenizable. What does that actually mean? Well, as it turns out, a lichen is a fungus. And algae or cyanobacteria are what we used to call blue, green algae symbiote. It's more than one organism. So when we look at a common folios lichen here, what we'll find is a fungal cortex, very densely backed, packed mycelia. A loose medulla area, you can see the fungal hyphae very clearly. And a layer of algae, kind of the way you would expect a leaf structure to look. And then a lower cortex of very dense fungal strands, and maybe some structures underneath and we'll come back to this. So, a lichen is not a single organism. It's a composite organism. Now, about 20,000 species and growing a fungi can be involved in these relationships. They're what we call a mycobiant. And 90% of these are from one group, the Ascomi seeds or the Ascomi coda, the sac fungi, and 2% other fungi like the city windings. In terms of the algae or cyanobacteria, there are now 100 known species that may be involved. 90% of lichens have algae. About 10% have blue, green algae or what really are bacteria, cyanobacteria. And there are some species, including bacteria here in Maine, that have both. So what's the nature of this unique symbiosis? Is it a mutualism? Is it a commensalism? Is it a parasitism? You can find some arguments in literature for any one of those things. So what we know is this. What the mycobiant provides for the photobiant is shelter, water and inorganic nutrients, protection from intense ultraviolet radiation, and protection from predators and pathogens. So that's what the algae or cyanobacteria get out of the relationship. What does the fungus get out? The fungus gets sugar alcohols produced during photosynthesis that leak out of the cell walls of the algae or glucose directly if it has a relationship with cyanobacteria. So is this a true mutualism? They each get something out of it. We could argue that. And some likes, they actually penetrate the photobiant cells with these protrusions called hostaria, and they quickly kill the cell as a result. In fact, some of them kill the cells almost as fast as they can reproduce. That doesn't sound like a mutualism. That sounds more like a controlled parasitism somewhere. So it probably depends on the liken that we're talking about. And I've represented the situation here as if it's quite simple, a kind of quid pro quo. But it's actually much more complex than that. So not only do we have CO2, water and light going to the alga and sugar alcohol is going to the fungus, we've got metabolites in the fungus that are influencing synthesis inside of the algal cell. And substances produced by the algal cell that are influencing the production of lichen compounds in the lichens and the fungus metabolism. So it's actually a quite complex relationship. And the more we study genomics, the more complex this relationship becomes. Another aspect of lichens is the concept of morphogenesis. So a lichen species is actually named after the primary fungus that met the ballast. But as it turns out, the symbionts look entirely different if they're isolated from one another. So here's a species of Oostnia and the statistical Oostnia form. But if you culture the primary fungus and the primary algae in this structure, it looks like this and this. Neither of them take the form of the actual symbiotic organism, and they won't until they're together again. In fact, some of the fungi that are found in lichens are not found in the wild without lichens. It may be they cannot survive without lichens. Again, this is very common. They probably all seen these things called British soldiers, right? I will point out that there are a half a dozen species in Maine that will produce these same red soldiers. So the different species. But this is a very common one Clodonia Christotella. And again, if you separate these guys in culture, the fungus looks like this kind of a bunch of wad of white fungal hyphae. And then the alga Travoxia, which is one of the most common photo biomes amongst lichens, looks like that kind of a green slime. It's only when you put the two together that you get the magical morphogenesis of this creature. So I'm going to try for a third time to define what lichens really are. And there's been a coming realization in the last decade that lichens are really ecosystems. That not just one fungus, but multiple fungi may be involved in a particular lichen phallus. So there are a number of fungi that are lichen, excuse me, like a Nicholas, they live on or in other lichens. There may be multiple species of photo biomes in the same lichen phallus. There may be multiple in our multiple bacterial symbionts, yeast symbionts and viral symbionts. It means that if you go out and look at a particular species of lichen and do a DNA analysis on all the critters that live in this system, you may find that one lichen of the same species does not have the same DNA profile of another, because there are different fungi, different bacteria, different photo biomes, different yeasts inhabiting that particular thallus. So the flexibility of symbiont makeup in a lichen can mean there is a lot of diversity in terms of genotypes of a particular species of lichen out there. That populations of lichens may be quite different from one another depending upon which symbionts they happen to carry. And that the communities of lichens from place to place may be very different, exactly the same species. And it's this flexibility in terms of the makeup of this composite system, which may spell the key to lichen success, why it is they can occupy the most extreme environments, ranging from the poles to the, you know, hottest deserts. Lichen reproduction is complex. First of all, lichens can reproduce vegetatively and they can do that in three different ways. First of all, pieces of lichen can simply break off fragmentation, blow with the wind, get carried in squirrel fur and find some suitable substrate and start growing again. That's pretty straight cut and dry. Or lichens may produce one of two additional structures. Ceredia are balls of fungal hyphae with some photo biomes in them. These things get released, blow with the wind, get carried by water, get carried by animals, settle someplace, and this can now, because it's got both the mycobiant and the photo biome, produce new lichen. Or they may produce these structures called icidia. Now, icidia differ from ceridia in that they have a layer of fungal cortex around. But basically we still got the fungus and the algae together. This goes someplace settles in an appropriate habitat. Boom. Sprouts alike. So the key here is both the fungus and the photo biome disperse together. But lichens may also show sexual or asexual reproduction. So apathetia and parathetia are sexual spore forming structures. Pycnidia are asexual spore forming structures. So this is a typical apathetia. And in the apathetia you can see these tiny little sac-like structures that are called ascii. And those ascii have spores. A parathetia also has ascii. But a parathetium, instead of being the outside of the lichen, is actually embedded in the lichen. All you really see is this top part. But again, it can release these spores. The problem is this. These spores do not have the photo biome. It's just the fungus. So when these spores emerge and fungal hyphae start to emerge from them, in order for the lichen to form, that fungus has to acquire a photo biome. Otherwise, there is no lichen as a result. So here they go with the photo biome. Here the fungus has to reacquire a photo biome. And it's actually even more complicated than I have for every sanitary. How about diversity of ligates? For those of you not familiar with it, North America can be divided up into ego regions. These are regions that are similar in terms of climate and soil geology and, you know, plant, often plant communities and so forth. Equal regional schemes get to find different ways. This is the one that was formed as the result of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Act, where Mexico, the US and Canada agreed that they would convene a panel of scientists and geologists together and develop a unified eco-regional scheme for North America. And this is the level one scheme. They progressed to level two, level three, level four, where they increasingly subdivide small areas. And you can see right now main is split between two of these eco-regions. One study done this year, or published this year, people looked at herbarium collections to determine what the diversity of these various eco-regions was in terms of lichen species. So I'll just point out that main lies in the northern forest and the east temperate forest eco-region. You can see the highest number of lichen species is boom. And part of main, 1694. This one is not far behind this third lowest, 1118. So, so main has a little for a very to some other areas like this, this eco-region, the Great Plains Eco-Region. But look at this. On this side, we have a lichen rarity index. And what these numbers mean is the average number of other eco-regions that have these lichen species in them. So each lichen species in an eco-region, how many other eco-regions does it sit in, tally up all those, get the average, and the average value for the most diverse eco-region is also one of the lowest. So many of the lichens that exist in our eco-region are rare. The rarest, of course, is down here in the wet tropical forest in southern Florida. So that allowed these authors to say most lichens are rare. So how about New England? I'm going to take all of this from Heinz and Heinz 2007. They found that 56% of New England lichens are rare or in decline. 16 species have disappeared from New England since the early 1900s. And as they weren't, they haven't found sense now. I will point out that absence of proof is not proof of absence. But when lots of people are looking for something that are skilled and knowledgeable and can't find it, that's a pretty good indicator. It's probably gone. 39 species have disappeared from at least three New England states. And most of those species are either very sensitive to air pollution or and or are old growth forest specialists. The good news is of these 39, 36 are still found in Maine, including this pseudo-cyphal area, crocata, a really startling gold and brown lichen. Then that may mean Maine is sort of a refuge being one of the most forest, well the most forested state in the Union by land area, and maybe having better air quality than other New England states. Like in conservation issues, air pollution, these three big players, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, pneumonia are really bad news for many lichens. You can see lichens in general will increase with increasing nitrogen concentration and sensitive lichen species dramatically so. Photochemicals and it's chemical formed in the atmosphere secondarily by the action of ultraviolet radiation on various primary pollutants, in terms of ozone pans or aldehydes. And then there are perioxial acetyl nitrates of heavy metals and again lots of heavy metals get arylized. All of these things tend to reduce like a metabolism, they can reduce growth they can reduce survival importantly and they can reduce species diversity. Land use changes suburbanization agriculture lead to habitat fragmentation and habitat fragmentation. And then changes critical light temperature and moisture regimes which reduces survival of lichens, but can also reduce reproduction because they become dispersal barriers, you end up with islands of a suitable habitat for some. A number of studies have shown that intensive forest management also reduces like a diversity because it reduces habitat, like, and continuity. Certainly in some space, some areas, the introduction of invasive plant species, Rhododendron, for example, ends up swapping some forests and reduces habitat complexity for lichens which reduces like a diversity. And the final big one of course is climate change as it is affecting so many other systems on the planet. Climate warming is changing temperature moisture regimes and for some lichens that's a death now. A recent study have shown that the rates of photos in beyond evolution in algae in particular, particularly the most prevalent algae, Traboxia is really slow. Traboxia based on genomics appears to only have adapted for every increase in temperature by one degree centigrade over about a million years. So the symbiotes that the function may be okay but the photosymbionts may not be. Another recent study 2016 showed that the 93% distributional loss and high altitude lichens with warming. So these are the Appalachians, a hotspot for lichen diversity. And this is the projection, the orange shows the prevalence of high lichen diversity. You can see by 2050 what's projected and by 2070. So we'll look at sea level rise along the Mid-Atlantic coast. These red areas are very high areas of lichen diversity. And these areas are going to be the first that are inundated by increasing sea levels that are a logical consequence of global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps. So the second conservation of the IUCN, the International Union for Conservation Nature, has a red listed 590 species, 279 of which are in the US, two of which are in Maine. The federal government has two species on the US Endangered List, the Florida perforate cladonia, and the rock gnome lichen. Maine, by the way, these are not in Maine, neither one. We have none on the Maine list. So you want to look at lichens, what do you need? You need something to magnify with. There are lots of lenses out there. I have an embarrassing number of them. I know you can go on by a $6 plastic one. I would advise against it. I would advise $10, $20 at least and get something that's halfway decent. I would advise nothing more than 15, at least 10 magnification, probably not more than 15. The focal distance gets too short, you have to get right on top of the lichen. So 14, 15, 16, about as high as you want to go, right. Many of them now come with a light, which is very useful, especially get really close to something. You can spend well over 100s on Iwamoto's. They have fabulous optics. I'm not sure that they're worth it. I have one, I am embarrassed to say I do, but I tend to use my Vaushanlam Hastings or a cheapie with a light more than anything else. You can use a camera, a camera magnifier on your phone, right. So here's the lichen I took the other day just to show you the size of it. And then that's what I do with my camera magnifier and phone. And yeah, I can see some structures there. I can see these articulations and I can see the presence of these seride and so forth, right. But in fact, and phone cameras getting better and better. The question about it. A really cheap pocket point and shoot camera will probably have a macro feature on it. And they do a much better job at this. You can really see the structures much more clearly here when I used my little pocket camera on the macro setting. And you can usually blow these up so you can really see some some detail. If you're going to collect lichens and I don't anymore. Pretty much I don't. It's just a pocket knife and these simple paper squares or paper bags. That's all you need. Okay, if I wanted to collect a lichen like this, I would not just carve off the entire thing. I would take a small representative piece. This critter maybe, you know, 15 years old. But you have to look at it carefully. So if you look at this like and you'll see here's some very smooth lobes. But here's some lobes that seem to have some structures on them and the structures are critical for identification. So if you look at the entire thalas make sure you get a portion of it that has structures on it if you're going to take it. There are some chemical tests that you can do that further help you identify oven cleaner provides the material for one Clorox bleach the material for the other. So it's really simple low tech stuff falling branches are great I went out this morning, found some branches that came down the wind up my crab out. And we found eight species of lichen on that little branch. So there's 123. There's a crustose lichen there. There's nice orange Santhoria just starting out there. Although it's already got a fruiting body. This and this are the same thing. That's something different. This is something different. This brown one is different than this brown one. There's tons of diversity right in your own backyard. So, depending on how you're going to approach to do need is a guide. And if you want to study lichens in Maine or New England in general. This is the book. Do not order it on Amazon.com. They listed for about four times its price that you can buy it from the New York Botanical Garden shop. And I think it's about $65 but it's way over 100 on Amazon. Pat Heinz took most of his patent Jim Heinz Pat Heinz took almost all the photos and they're all beautiful. The keys are very easy to follow. And if you don't want to buy the book right away just want to try it out. But their key is free. You can get basically all the keys they have the 2013 edition at this website and downloaded as a PDF. And what I'm going to do is walk you very quickly through what you need to know to use the key because what they do is they start out with this really simple index. And it relies on these eight characters. It's straight whether it's on trees rocks or soil, it's growth form we already covered what growth forms were right. The color the lobe size and remember these are the lobes right. And it's greater than five millimeters or less than five millimeters. And I just want to point out that you can see the lobes very easily on this thing and this is about as big as your palm. Can you see the lobes on this little yellow one. You can see the lobes too, but they're obviously very much under five millimeters. And then the presence of one of these four structures. And as soon as you decide what you're like it has, say it's this one. They will refer you to the page where the keys get more complicated so you can actually get down to species. So I'm just going to spend a little time on the first one the color. Because I was when I first out I found this one very confusing mineral gray well mineral gray covers lots of ground. For me it covered you know they were talking about greens, they're calling mineral gray and you know some things do look mineral gray right but that doesn't not that much. So, so mineral gray is kind of a fuzzy characteristic. And yellow green and yellow are pretty straightforward. Orange ever it's got that right brown to brownish gray greenish brown pretty straightforward. And grays dark brown black pretty straightforward. I will point out that lichens can differ in their apparent color based on whether they're wet or dry. They've grown directly in the sun or more shaded. And what the Heinz have done is, if this liking can appear in more than one color chart they've listed it both places. So you will know you don't have to get the specific color of what they've said the like and was you can kind of go by the color about the likeness when you look at it. So if you look at a like and you only need to kind of check out these characteristics in the field. What color is the upper cortex. What color is the lower cortex. It's always going to be different. It's either going to be white or a or brown or black for most liking species that have a lower cortex. The color is the medulla. I remember the medulla is the inner layer so I always have to kind of scrape a little piece off and break it. And I did on this one. And you can see that well most like us have kind of a gray white medulla this one is orange. And that's diagnostic in this area for this particular species. You have the structures you have to look at the whole fellas, because the structures won't necessarily be on every lobe some lobes are quite smooth some lobes clearly got things going on here right. So you have to examine the whole thing. You have to look for a city and we talked about a city and see them here and I blew them up here. Okay so these are these look like finger like projections that look like this they may be simple or they may be quarreling with branches. And where they're located is diagnostic, but all you need to know is Scott I city to get to the right key. Do they have ceridia. And I find the distance, the difference between we go back a bit. Notice that these look like little projections. These do not. Right. I always think they look to me like heads of broccoli or something, or cauliflower or something like that. And that's because they're not covered with cortex. And they may be individual or they may exist in clumps that are called so rally and singular so rally a plural. And again where they are can be diagnostic, but all you need to know for the initial identification doesn't have to have city. Does it have. Does it have both some species do doesn't have these little crevices that are called articulations that allow air into the medulla to the photo buyer. Does it have pseudo site Valley. These are like articulations except their pets. They're not crevices. Does it have what looks like powdered sugar. Especially on the distal ends of the lobes. Those are called purina and and very diagnostic for a couple of species like doesn't have fruit like structures called rising. They can be simple. They can be complex with cross branches. They can be the same color as the lower cortex. They can be a different color. Those are all diagnostic rising help. Particularly the. Likens that are all nice trees to hold on. Does it have silly. Now silly kind of look like rising except they come out from the periphery. Of the balance from underneath it. And they may be the same color as the, as the, as the lobes themselves. Does it have apothecia, these cup like spore forming structures. And they can be different colors. They can the same colors like our different colors and liking. And again, they can be arranged differently. They can have other structures associated with them. Does it have picnidia. We're kind of like parrot these young you can really see as the opening, but they look like little ink dots. Let me blow that up a little more. And those like is a pretty regular. The volume batches. So again, you see this part. Here's the sport forming structure in the balance itself. There's just one group of lichens, these things actually protrude out from the edge of the lobe. There, what's called picnidial projections. And finally, does it have podisha these very upright structures. So you learn those simple characteristics and you're ready to go. You can determine if you're liking has any of those, or none of them find what corresponds to that particular choice, go to that page and it will start you want the key to identifying your particular species. Now, if you get the book, you've got images to go by if you get this just this you'll have no images and I'll fix that just a minute. I do want to acquaint you with this book. This book is kind of like the Bible of lichens for North Americans by Ernie Brodo and the Sharnoffs published in 2001. I took two week long intensive courses with Ernie. He's kind of like the Gandalf of North American Lycanology. This one has 1500 species and Ernie just published an update of just the keys in 2016. So it has more species than the hind but species across all of North America. And great photographs by Sylvia Sharnoff. And includes the crusto species, which which the Heinz book doesn't. Again, if I were going to do lichens in Maine, I would get the Heinz book it's wonderful. I know there's some other guides out there. I have Ralph Popes. This is a great little guide if you're going up above tree line on a hike. That's where he specialized. I don't know much about these two. This one, again, if you're going to buy it. I think it's about $38 at the near technical carton shop. If you go online and try to buy it's like $138. So, I would go there if you're interested in that it will have many fewer lichens than the Heinz book does. You want pictures of the lichen you observe you identify the Heinz guy there are a bunch of websites you can you can play with. Discover life has one that if you ever use these keys you kind of choose okay my thing looks like this you choose that and it starts narrowing the list of things. Choices that you have to to go so it goes right through characteristics and it's a very user friendly guide. Now you can get the free so seek app for either iPhone or Android. So I had a picture of this lichen on my screen and I took my phone and sure enough they got it right. I don't think it's very good with lichen seek is getting better and better the. But lichens can be hard without additional tests that aren't readily apparent additional characteristics that are not readily apparent from a simple image for many lichen species, and it can only look at what it can see. They can't, for example, tell you from this image what the lower cortex looks like what colors it will seek can't see that because you didn't make it clear. I could have like flip back one of these and then take in the picture but they did. You can go on I naturalist and do a search for me and I just common leggings of New England, and you can see that there are 124 species that have been reported on high naturalists since the program came online in 2011. There are other lichen websites, the USDA runs one. The Sharnoffs have their own website beautiful photographs. The North American lichen herbaria consortium as a lichen portal. Here you sort of have to know the genus you're after to actually start searching species. But you may well know that from the from the Heinz field guide. And what you can do is take a short course. Gary, Gary pro monitor is going to be doing the one the end of November online and introduction to love ends at Eagle Hill. These courses are very rewarding, usually five nights two hours a night. To be honest, I'm supposed to be in one right now it's the last night of my spider course. I love these kinds of course get an expert up there. He dumps a whole bunch of knowledge that takes years and years for you to acquire you get it all like a short period of time. You just in this course and go to the Eagle Hill website and see if that's something you want to take. So, at this point, I think I'm out of time and I'm happy to answer your questions but there are so many lichens right around your own house out there. This is an easy thing to get hooked on. You can do it by photography. You can do it by taking small samples and taking them home and looking at if you've got a digital microscope and that's what I use now. Just cheap little digital microscope. You have a hand lens. It's it's a it's a great way to keep yourself busy during the winter months when biological diversity seems to decline here. This picture I took just yesterday morning, right outside the education center at UMF. Now, Kenny Wathapark is a great place to go. A bunch of those trees have been there for a long time. They're large. They've been exposed with lots of light. I took generations of students there to study lichens, lots of diversity, both on the trees themselves and on the rocks that are exposed. So, lots and lots of opportunities out there to get involved with lichens and lots of species to investigate. So, at that point, if there are any questions, I'd be happy to entertain it. Thank you. That was incredible information that I think people are maybe feeling overwhelmed with. I'm not sure. Are there any questions? No. I think you've maybe answered all the questions. I have to say that there's a lot of information packed in here. It's kind of I wish I'd had this lecture when I first started. It would have given me a much clearer path to walk. But I will say that much more is known about the complexity of lichens today than when I first started looking at looking at them 25 years or so ago. And that's, again, through modern molecular techniques to study genomics that we're understanding just how complex these little critters that one person described to me once is. Well, I think that's just those are just like scabs on the tree. It's diseased. Not quite, but again, fascinating, fascinating organisms. Yes. We have one question. Okay. How many different what? Oh, things. I didn't quite get that. So her question is, there's the fungi. The algae. So can there be more than one type of algae and more than one type of fungus growing together. That's what that's what the new genomics say. They're given like in species has probably got most of the fungus in it is a one species, but that we're now finding there are multiple species of fungus in a single Dallas. There may be multiple species of photo biance in the same like in Dallas now often it's most one. But it's not always the same one as was long thought. So it was long thought that well, if a lichen forms a symbiotic relationship with say the algae proboxia. That's the only one it forms with. Well, no, that apparently is not the case. It apparently lichens can actually change the photo by hot. If they emerge from a sport, or if they emerge from an I city at let's say with the photo by at they left the parent Dallas with, and they acquire a new photo by it. Do they do species do they keep both does one replace the other. Apparently, apparently, either one of those things can happen. So, apparently, there's quite a bit of flexibility in a particular lichen species in terms of the makeup of which fungal components are there which photo by components which bacterial components which yeast components and so on. It's a it's a really kind of flexible composite organism that we treat as if it's an animal or a plant, or a mushroom, when it's not. Thank you. Any other questions. Looks like that's it. Thank you very much Ron for a fascinating talk. Appreciate your agreeing to do this. Again, I apologize for not being a lichen expert. I just kind of shared with you what I've learned over the years. Again, consider myself a lichen the hobbyist and apologize to any real lichen experts out there who happen to be in the audience. Okay, well thanks again. Surely applause applause from the audience for you. Well thank you very much. Good night all.