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

地衣是真菌与一种或多种藻类或蓝细菌之间的共生关系。它们在许多生态系统中发挥着重要的生态功能，例如土壤稳定性和水净化。 Sticta 地衣属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。由于它们体积大，能够储存和释放大量的水，这些地衣有助于水循环，包括城市水库的区域。大多数物种都含有蓝细菌，可以固定大气中的氮，从而起到生物肥料的作用。 Sticta 物种是生态干扰、空气污染和全球气候变化特别敏感的指标，因此已从北半球广大地理区域的许多栖息地消失。尽管 Sticta 包括 120 个物种，但遗传数据表明，全世界可能有多达 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 的多样性，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对我们社会所发挥的重要生态作用至关重要。 该项目还包含旨在公共教育和生态旅游的公民科学和外展材料的组成部分。该项目汇集了一系列广泛的工具，以在历史生物地理学的框架内阐明 Sticta 的进化和多样化，包括传统和下一代 DNA 测序方法的结合，以测试大型地衣真菌属 DNA 条形码的可行性。该研究将从有针对性地收集 Sticta 标本开始，这些标本将用于 DNA 序列和形态分析。该项目将利用系统发育方法推断物种界限、谱系之间的分歧日期、生物地理学、生态位和形态特征状态重建。实施了有效整合分子和形态学数据的新方法。这包括基于形态学的系统发育分类，将历史类型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，并生成识别这些问题所必需的工具。 将研究表型和光共生体（包括两种不同类型的光生物素的地衣）的进化及其对于理解地衣中真菌和藻类或蓝藻伙伴的形态发生和相互作用的重要性。该项目培训了两名博士后，并包括两个国际研讨会。

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.