When visitors come to explore Great Smoky Mountains National Park, they have access to a wealth of knowledge highlighting the diversity of plants, animals, and ecosystems found in this special place.

Lichens are complex organisms, created by a mutually beneficial relationship between fungus and either algae or cyanobacteria. Lichens can display a wide variety of forms and colors, and you've ...

Diversity and Distributions, Vol. 28, No. 9 (September 2022), pp. 1810-1819 (10 pages) Aim: Understanding ecological distributions of global biodiversity is stymied by incomplete knowledge of drivers ...

The patches of lichen you’ve probably seen growing on tree trunks and park benches might be easy to overlook, but they’re actually some of the world’s strangest living things. While they're sometimes ...

Lichens have long been regarded as emblematic examples of mutualistic symbioses between fungi and photosynthetic partners. Recent research, however, has revealed that these organisms also harbour ...

Fungi in orange lichens can avoid the toxic effects of bright pigments, allowing them to handle high UV loads. Lichens are curious plant-like organisms that consist of one fungus species and at least ...

General introduction -- Short history of lichen study in New Zealand -- Reproduction in lichen -- Structure of a lichen -- Rates of growth -- Uses of lichens (As food ; As medicine ; As source of ...