Lipophilic arsenic compounds in the cultured green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.

In this study, arsenic (As) speciation was investigated in the freshwater alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii treated with 20 μg/L arsenate using fractionation as well as ICP-MS/ESI-MS analyses and was compared with the known As metabolite profile of wild-grown Saccharina latissima. While the total As accumulation in C. reinhardtii was about 85% lower than in S.

Antibiotic-Induced Treatments Reveal Stress-Responsive Gene Expression in the Endangered Lichen Lobaria pulmonaria.

Antibiotics are primarily found in the environment due to human activity, which has been reported to influence the structure of biotic communities and the ecological functions of soil and water ecosystems. Nonetheless, their effects in other terrestrial ecosystems have not been well studied. As a result of oxidative stress in organisms exposed to high levels of antibiotics, genotoxicity can lead to DNA damage and, potentially, cell death.

The Bacterial Community of the Foliose Macro-lichen Peltigera frigida Is More than a Mere Extension of the Microbiota of the Subjacent Substrate.

Lichens host highly diverse microbial communities, with bacteria being one of the most explored groups in terms of their diversity and functioning. These bacteria could partly originate from symbiotic propagules developed by many lichens and, perhaps more commonly and depending on environmental conditions, from different sources of the surroundings. Using the narrowly distributed species Peltigera frigida as an object of study, we propose that bacterial communities in these lichens are different from those in their subjacent substrates, even if some taxa might be shared.

The evolution of fungal substrate specificity in a widespread group of crustose lichens.

Lichens exhibit varying degrees of specialization with regard to the surfaces they colonize, ranging from substrate generalists to strict substrate specialists. Though long recognized, the causes and consequences of substrate specialization are poorly known. Using a phylogeny of a 150-200 Mya clade of lichen fungi, we asked whether substrate niche is phylogenetically conserved, which substrates are ancestral, whether specialists arise from generalists or vice versa and how specialization affects speciation/extinction processes.

ITS2 metabarcoding analysis complements lichen mycobiome diversity data.

Lichen thalli harbor complex fungal communities (mycobiomes) of species with divergent trophic and ecological strategies. The complexity and diversity of lichen mycobiomes are still largely unknown, despite surveys combining culture-based methods and high-throughput sequencing (HTS). The results of such surveys are strongly influenced by the barcode locus chosen, its sensitivity in discriminating taxa, and the depth to which public sequence repositories cover the phylogenetic spectrum of fungi.

ITS1 metabarcoding highlights low specificity of lichen mycobiomes at a local scale.

As self-supporting and long-living symbiotic structures, lichens provide a habitat for many other organisms beside the traditionally considered lichen symbionts-the myco- and the photobionts. The lichen-inhabiting fungi either develop diagnostic phenotypes or occur asymptomatically. Because the degree of specificity towards the lichen host is poorly known, we studied the diversity of these fungi among neighbouring lichens on rocks in an alpine habitat.

Characterization of microsatellite loci in the lichen-forming fungus Cetraria aculeata (Parmeliaceae, Ascomycota).

Premise Of The Study: Polymorphic microsatellite markers were developed for the lichen species Cetraria aculeata (Parmeliaceae) to study fine-scale population diversity and phylogeographic structure.

Methods And Results: Using Illumina HiSeq and MiSeq, 15 fungus-specific microsatellite markers were developed and tested on 81 specimens from four populations from Spain. The number of alleles ranged from four to 13 alleles per locus with a mean of 7.

Ecological Specialization of Two Photobiont-Specific Maritime Cyanolichen Species of the Genus Lichina.

All fungi in the class Lichinomycetes are lichen-forming and exclusively associate with cyanobacteria. Two closely related maritime species of the genus Lichina (L. confinis and L.

Pleistocene expansion of the bipolar lichen Cetraria aculeata into the Southern hemisphere.

Many boreal and polar lichens occupy bipolar distributional ranges that frequently extend into high mountains at lower latitudes. Although such disjunctions are more common among lichens than in other groups of organisms, the geographic origin of bipolar lichen taxa, and the way and time frame in which they colonized their ranges have not been studied in detail. We used the predominantly vegetative, widespread lichen Cetraria aculeata as a model species.

Alphaproteobacterial communities in geographically distant populations of the lichen Cetraria aculeata.

Lichen symbioses were recently shown to include diverse bacterial communities. Although the biogeography of lichen species is fairly well known, the patterns of their bacterial associates are relatively poorly understood. Here we analyse the composition of Alphaproteobacteria in Cetraria aculeata, a common lichen species that occurs at high latitudes and various habitats.

Extreme phenotypic variation in Cetraria aculeata (lichenized Ascomycota): adaptation or incidental modification?

Background And Aims: Phenotypic variability is a successful strategy in lichens for colonizing different habitats. Vagrancy has been reported as a specific adaptation for lichens living in steppe habitats around the world. Among the facultatively vagrant species, the cosmopolitan Cetraria aculeata apparently forms extremely modified vagrant thalli in steppe habitats of Central Spain.