Taxonomic Revision of Selected Sonoran Lichen Families

小行星9707714 地衣是真菌和真菌的共生体，通常根据共生体中的真菌生物体进行鉴定和分类。它们广泛存在，有时大量存在于土壤、岩石和附生植物中。数千种地衣的分类因其在博物馆收藏中的代表性差和体积小而变得复杂，导致人们强调一些所谓的“关键”特征进行区分。不幸的是，现在人们普遍认为，这些关键特征中的许多在地衣的不同类群或谱系中已经进化了多次;因此，地衣分类需要更多的标本和更密切的关注新的形态和分子特征的获得。对于北美索诺兰沙漠和邻近的具有地中海型气候的加州地区的大型地衣“植物群”，托马斯纳什教授召集了一个由50名左右的专家组成的国际团队，从学生到高级研究人员，完成了一个疑似1700种地衣的分类清单。四个大的和分类学上麻烦的属，Arthonia，Buellia，Lecania和Solenopsora，是野外工作，博物馆研究和分类修订的主要目标;第五属，Verrucaria，将接受初步研究。这将与欧洲的年轻工作者一起完成，他们专门研究这些群体的地中海亲属，并且可以测试物种限制和诊断北美群体中的变异。 地衣的生物多样性和分类在世界大部分地区仍然知之甚少，其研究传统强调由一两位专家进行的狭隘的国家或区域研究。纳什教授的国际同事联盟，专注于北美的一个大沙漠地区，与世界地中海气候的分类亲属，促进了两种现代方法，有望彻底改变地衣的研究。第一，来自国际人才库的专家的合作工作;第二，从全球角度比较形态和解剖特征，以评估有助于识别和高级分类的分类特征的可靠性。

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.