Tricia Nicholson REU 2018
0 (0 Likes / 0 Dislikes)
Hi there!My name is Tricia Nicholson
and this summer I'm serving as a research assistant to Dr. Matt Nelsen
at the Field Museum of Natural History
At the Field, I am responsible for studying lichens, and today I'm going
to tell you why you should care about them and what makes them so cool.
So what is a lichen, exactly?
A lichen is a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an algae or cyanobacteria
working together to create a new
organism.
Since there are so many unique combinations of fungi and algal partners
lichens come in a wide variety of beautiful shapes and sizes.
Lichens are important because they cover almost 8% of the globe's land
In addition, some are bioindicators, which means
they reflect the air conditions of the world around them,
so we know when the air is clean or polluted.
Although they occur everywhere on Earth,
some lichens prefer different conditions than others.
This is Cetraria glauca
and this specific lichen was collected in France all the way back in 1868.
This is just one occurrence for one species.
Here at the Field, I'm currently looking at thousands of occurrences
for over two hundred species.
That's a lot of data,
but computer programs like "R" make it easy for me
to extract many locations and occurrences at once
and consolidate the findings into one
big list.