Nathan Chrismas

Some super lichens here in the Dolomites. A favourite of the trip so far is Bellemerea alpina, a species that's incredibly scarce in the Cairngorms but in the heart of its range here.

En route to the First Symposium of Alpine Lichenology. Very excited for this! I'll be discussing work from our Scottish hills and looking forward to putting it in the context of mountain environments on a wider scale.

Nice.

Ok, I can see some vasculars on the article picture.

Perhaps a bit of lichen blindness here - the effect of birds on driving lichen communities is well recognised to the point that we have a name for them - ornithocoprophilous, or bird-poop-loving.

Interesting looking study on the effects of seabird droppings on plant communities. Not read properly yet, but a quick skim and lichens are only mentioned once, despite being the only 'plant' visible in the lead photo (yes I know they're not plants, but)

A wingless female belted beauty moth, Lycia zonaria.

Female Belted Beauty moth. This is the Scottish subspecies, Lycia zonaria atlantica, found on machair grassland in the Hebrides (here on Mingulay)

Matt I hope we get to meet some time, I want to chat to you about music as much as I want to chat to you about lichens 😂

In Birmingham for our workshop on lichen microbiomes thanks to the NERC Arctic Office. Here's @ingeborgklarenberg.bsky.social talking about her work on lichen associated communities in Antarctica

Good to see the BBS has made it over here too

I'm sure we could put a template together and make it available on the BLS website

This is a great idea. Perhaps a 'frame' with a scale on would be a good way of standardising measurements? i.e. a square of paper with a 5x5cm window cut out with printed mm scale on one side that could be placed over the lichen so that images could be easily aligned.

Excellent Peter! I've been meaning to try something like this out myself so good to see the extent of growth you've seen in that time frame. Cool to see it outcompeting that little Caloplaca thing too.

It's a map that projects the globe of the Earth in a way that distorts the Americas and Eurasia, but accurately represents Australasia. It's got white whispy clouds, blue water, and green to sand-yellow color on the landmasses. Stolen from a Reddit post on /MapPorn, posted by user 'molfarus' in 2022.

A map that centers on New Zealand, which I guess is reparation for all the maps that leave New Zealand off entirely.

Scorching! Hope your trip's going well too!

John Raven, FRS, FRSE: a truly great innovator in plant physiology, photosynthesis and much more - Photosynthesis Research This is a tribute to a truly inspirational plant biologist, Prof. John A. Raven, FRS, FRSE (25th June 1941– 23rd May 2024), who died at the age of 82. He was a leader in the field of evolution and phy...

Aquatic photosynthesis knowledge would be at a considerably lower level without John Raven. What a life and legacy! 🌊

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A man climbing on a mountain

A black-tipped bushy lichen

Lots of this lovely Usnea ciliata to be found on the Grand Traverse of the Remarkables above Queenstown. A New Zealand endemic, one of its defining characteristics is the purple-black pigmentation at the ends of its branches

Complexity of the lichen symbiosis revealed by metagenome and transcriptome analysis of Xanthoria parietina Lichens are symbiotic associations of fungi, algae, and bacteria that result in large, self-assembling organisms. Tagirdzhanova et al. use metagenomics to profile taxonomic diversity within the sunbur...

And here's the full article www.cell.com/current-biol...

Genomics: A window into the molecular mystery box of lichen symbiosis How is a symbiosis built? Lichen metagenomic and metatranscriptomic surveys comparing growth stages, experimental treatments and environmental settings identify a catalogue of candidate genes — and mi...

Want a quick overview before diving into @metalichen.bsky.social et al's new work on Xanthoria -omics in @currentbiology.bsky.social? Read our commentary here www.cell.com/current-biol...

Sticta latifrons

Yarrumia colensoi

Stereocaulon ramulosum

Currently in New Zealand and blown away by the lichen assemblages here. Many familiar genera, but new species to me and boy are those macrolichens BIG.

Here are Sticta latifrons, Yarrumia colensoi, and Stereocaulon ramulosum from the Mt Aspiring national park.

Please add @britishlichensociety.org.uk to the list - their recording and mapping scheme is excellent

Natalie Berry

Some personal news: I was made redundant from UKClimbing as Editor-in-Chief after 10 years in the company. I'll continue my freelance journalism, but I'm also open to part/ full-time reporting/writing/editing opportunities and story tips. RTs/shares much appreciated. Thank you!
www.natalie-berry.com

Would love to see this in the wild some day - what a beauty

Just a dude in a yellow jacket kneeling down on an icy hill looking for lichen

Hunting for frosty Cladonia in the Cairngorms this morning. Glad to get fieldwork out of the way before the impending cataclysm of Storm Eowyn

The lichen Protoparmeliopsis muralis, a grey lichen with brown fruiting bodies or apothecia, surrounded by a yellow crustose lichen

If you're interested in finding out more about lichens, do look at the British Lichen Society's (BLS) events page for walks, talks and more across the country over the next few months
britishlichensociety.org.uk/the-society/...

Welcoming the British Lichen Society to Bluesky, just in time for this year's AGM at the Natural History Museum in London.

Good to be back at the NHM for the British Lichen Society AGM. Feels like a long long time since my last visit.

Letharia vulpina. We’ve found lots of oxidative enzyme activity here, and keen to search for generalisation of this. Do you have it growing in a place you work? Able to collect some and post it to us?

Full article in the Lichenologist is here www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Proud to have played a small part in putting this together, with Becky Yahr and Jessi Allen doing a brilliant job of all the heavy lifting.