It’s been estimated that some 20,000 species of lichens cover 6 to 8% of the planet’s land surfaces, even though referring to the existence of even one species of lichen is just plain crazy talk. In ...

Lichens are mostly unaffected by low-severity fires. In severely burned areas, nearly all the lichen were gone, even 16 years after a fire. As increasingly hot and severe wildfires scorch the West, ...

Lichens are diverse and colorful organisms that can be found in nearly every environment on Earth, from the arctic tundra to tropical rainforests. Due to the wide variety of their phenotypes and ...

Lichens are a complex life form that consists of a partnership (a symbiosis) between two different organisms — a fungus and a photosynthetic organism — usually an alga or a cyanobacteria ...

Traditionally, scientists have likened lichen to a married couple: The crusty growths found on trees and rocks are actually composite organisms, formed by the symbiotic partnership between an algae ...

Symbiosis between fungi and microalgae gives rise to lichen. Some lichen, however, such as Lobaria scrobiculata, have a unique feature: the fungus establishes a symbiosis with a cyanobacteria, thus ...

EDMONTON — Our understanding of the marriage of fungus and algae in the formation of lichen is being upended by a University of Alberta research team whose work is rewriting the biology that ...

I know many of us want winter to come to an end, but I would like just one more good snowstorm. I love all seasons, but I need a little more of that winter bleakness in the woods, primarily to help me ...

CU Boulder researchers have discovered the first known molecular evidence of obligate symbiosis in lichens, a distinctive co-evolutionary relationship that could shed new light on how and why some ...

Lichens are the curious result of cohabitation between algae and fungi. Biologist Frank Bungartz tells DW about his passion for lichens - and why seeing them disappear should ring alarm bells. DW: You ...