Appreciation: Study reveals how lichens stayed together, split up, swapped partners, and changed form over 250M yr

Junglekeeper · Aug 11, 2020

Study reveals how lichens stayed together, split up, swapped partners, and changed form over 250 million years

In a new study out this week in Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers has advanced our understanding of the evolution of symbiosis by assembling the largest family tree of lichens to date, covering more than 3,300 species. They used this data to figure out how and when lichen fungi traded algae partners, and shifted between crusty and leafy/tufted growth forms over the past 250 million years, shedding new light on the ebb and flow of symbioses over evolutionary timescales.
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Appreciation: Study reveals how lichens stayed together, split up, swapped partners, and changed form over 250M yr

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