Taxonomic Revision of Selected Sonoran Lichen Families

选定的索诺兰地衣科的分类学修订

• 批准号: 9707714
• 负责人: Thomas Nash
• 金额: $ 5.5万
• 依托单位: Arizona State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1997
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1997-08-15 至 2000-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9707714&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Taxonomic; Revision; Selected; Sonoran; Lichen

9707714 Nash Lichens are symbiotic associations of a fungus and an alga, and they are usually identified and classified on the basis of the fungal organism in the partnership. They occur widely and at times abundantly on soil, rocks, and as epiphytes. The classification of the several thousands of species of lichens is complicated by their poor representation in museum collections and their small size, resulting in an emphasis on a few supposed "key" characters for discrimination. Unfortunately, it is now widely accepted that many of these key features have evolved multiple times, in different groups or lineages of lichens; thus, lichen classification requires more specimens and closer attention to the acquisition of new morphological and molecular characters. For the large lichen "flora" of the North American Sonoran desert and adjacent parts of California with a mediterranean type climate, Prof. Thomas Nash has assembled an international team of 50 or so specialists, students to senior researchers, to complete a taxonomic inventory of the suspected 1700 species of lichens. Four large and taxonomically troublesome genera, Arthonia, Buellia, Lecania, and Solenopsora, are the main targets for field work, museum study, and taxonomic revision; a fifth genus, Verrucaria, will receive preliminary study. This will be accomplished in conjunction with young European workers who have specialized on the mediterranean relatives of these groups, and who can test species limits and diagnoses against the variation to be found in the North American groups. The biodiversity and classification of lichens remain poorly known in most parts of the world, and the research tradition for their study has emphasized narrow national or regional studies by one or two specialists. Prof. Nash's international consortium of colleagues, focusing on a large desert region of North America, with taxonomic relatives in mediterranean climates of the world, promotes two modern approaches that promise to revolutionize the study of lichens. First, collaborative work by specialists drawn from an international pool of talent; second, a global perspective in comparisons of morphological and anatomical characters to assess the reliability of taxonomic features useful for identification and upper-rank classification.

9707714 Nash地衣是一种真菌和一种藻类的共生结合体，它们通常是根据合作关系中的真菌有机体来识别和分类的。它们广泛存在，有时大量存在于土壤、岩石和附生植物中。几千种地衣的分类很复杂，因为它们在博物馆藏品中代表性差，而且体积小，导致人们强调一些所谓的“关键”特征来进行区分。不幸的是，现在被广泛接受的是，许多这些关键特征在不同的地衣群体或谱系中进化了多次；因此，地衣分类需要更多的标本，并更加关注新的形态和分子特征的获取。为了研究北美索诺兰沙漠和加利福尼亚邻近地中海气候地区的大型地衣“植物群”，托马斯·纳什（Thomas Nash）教授组建了一个由50多名专家组成的国际团队，其中有学生，也有高级研究人员，他们对疑似1700种地衣进行了分类。4个大而分类学上麻烦的属，龙牙属、Buellia属、Lecania属和扶桑属，是野外工作、博物馆研究和分类修订的主要目标；第五个属，Verrucaria，将接受初步研究。这项工作将与专门研究这些类群的地中海近亲的年轻欧洲工作者合作完成，他们可以根据在北美类群中发现的变异来测试物种限制和诊断。在世界大部分地区，地衣的生物多样性和分类仍然鲜为人知，对它们的研究传统强调由一两个专家进行狭隘的国家或区域研究。纳什教授的国际同事联盟，专注于北美的大片沙漠地区，在世界地中海气候的分类学上有亲戚，推广了两种现代方法，有望彻底改变地衣的研究。首先，从国际人才库中抽取专家进行合作；其次，从全局角度比较形态学和解剖学特征，以评估对鉴定和上层分类有用的分类特征的可靠性。