Collaborative Research: Evolution, Diversification, and Conservation of a Megadiverse Flagship Lichen Genus

地衣是真菌和一种或多种藻类或蓝藻之间的共生体。它们在许多生态系统中发挥着重要的生态功能，如土壤稳定和水净化。地衣属Sticta在温带和热带地区的森林和林地生态系统中发挥着这些作用。由于其巨大的体积和储存和释放大量水的能力，这些地衣有助于水循环，包括在城市地区的水库地区。大多数物种含有固定大气氮的蓝细菌，因此具有生物肥料的功能。Sticta物种是生态干扰、空气污染和全球气候变化的特别敏感指标，因此在北方广大地理区域的许多生境中已经消失。虽然Sticta包括120个物种，但遗传数据表明，世界各地可能有多达400个物种等待发现，特别是在热带山区。一个国际研究小组试图利用现代基因组方法充分阐明Sticta多样性，并重建其进化历史，以进一步了解全球气候变化和地质事件对这些共生真菌多样化的作用。 这些知识对于理解和保护它们为我们社会发挥的重要生态作用至关重要。 该项目还包括公民科学的组成部分和旨在公众教育和生态旅游的宣传材料，汇集了一系列广泛的工具，在历史植物地理学的框架内阐明Sticta的演变和多样化，包括结合传统和下一代DNA测序方法，以测试DNA条形码对大型地衣真菌属的可行性。研究将开始，有针对性地收集Sticta标本，用于DNA序列和形态分析。利用系统发育学方法，该项目将推断物种界定，谱系之间的分歧日期，地理，生态位和形态特征状态重建。新的方法，有效地整合分子和形态学数据的实施。这包括基于形态学的系统发育分级，以将历史模式标本置于分子系统发育中。 这些工具将解决Sticta内的生物多样性问题，并产生对其识别至关重要的工具。 将研究表型和光共生菌群（地衣，包括两种不同类型的光合生物）的演变及其对理解地衣中真菌和藻类或蓝藻伴侣的形态发生和相互作用的重要性。该项目培训两名博士后，并包括两个国际讲习班。

Lichens are symbiotic associations between a fungus and one or more algae or cyanobacteria. They perform critical ecological functions such as soil stability and water purification in many ecosystems. The lichen genus Sticta plays these roles in forest and woodland ecosystems in temperate and tropical regions. Due to their large size and capacity to store and release large amounts of water, these lichens contribute to the water cycle, including in regions that are water reservoirs for urban areas. Most species contain cyanobacteria that fix atmospheric nitrogen and thus function as biological fertilizers. Sticta species are particularly sensitive indicators of ecological disturbance, air pollution and global climate change, and have therefore disappeared from many habitats over vast geographical regions in the Northern Hemisphere. Although Sticta includes 120 species, genetic data suggest that perhaps as many as 400 species await discovery throughout the world, particularly in tropical mountains. An international team of researchers seeks to fully elucidate Sticta diversity using modern genomic approaches, and reconstruct its evolutionary history to further our understanding of the role of global climatic shifts and geological events on the diversification of these symbiotic fungi. This knowledge is critical in understanding and conserving their important ecological roles they play for our society. The project also contains components of citizen science and outreach materials aimed at public education and ecotourism.This project brings together a broad array of tools to elucidate the evolution and diversification of Sticta within a framework of historical biogeography, including a combination of traditional and next-generation DNA sequencing methods, to test the viability of DNA barcoding for a large lichen fungal genus. The research will begin with targeted collection of Sticta specimens which will be used for DNA sequence and morphological analyses. Using phylogenetic methods the project will infer species delimitations, divergence dates among lineages, biogeography, ecological niche and morphological character state reconstructions. Novel approaches that effectively integrate molecular and morphological data are implemented. This includes morphology-based phylogenetic binning to place historical type specimens within the molecular phylogeny. These tools will resolve the biodiversity questions within Sticta and generate tools essential to their identification. The evolution of phenotypes and photosymbiodemes (lichens that include two different types of photobionts) and their importance for the understanding of morphogenesis and interactions of fungal and algal or cyanobacterial partners in lichens will be studied. The project trains two postdocs and includes two international workshops.