A New Claim to Fame: B.C.'s a Lichen Hotbed

June 28th 2007

Nicholas Read, Vancouver Sun

Published: Thursday, March 29, 2007

It took one scientist from the U.S. and another from Germany, but between them, they have discovered 13 new species of lichens in the B.C. rainforest that humankind never knew existed.

And within the next two years, they say, the number could rise to 50 or more.

In fact, says Toby Spribille, a lichenologist from the University of Gottingen in Germany, when it comes to discovering new forms of lichen, British Columbia, thanks to its largely unstudied rainforests, is revealing more previously undiscovered species than any other region on Earth.

The problem, says Spribille, is that with so many of these forests slated for logging, these 13 species -- and who knows how many more -- could disappear before scientists have had a chance to study and understand them properly.

Spribille and his colleague, Curtis Bjork, a botanist with the University of Idaho, spent the last five years searching the old-growth rainforests near Glacier National Park in the Kootenays and in the Robson Valley near McBride for new forms of lichen, a creature that is neither a plant nor an animal.

Instead, like its fungal cousin, the mushroom, it straddles both kingdoms and therefore becomes one of its own.

The largest lichen known to humankind is like a three-metre-long strand of hair, says Bjork, but the 13 new species he and Spribille discovered range in size from a pinhead to one slightly bigger than a penny, and are solid and round like pies.

'They also have a scalloped edge like you'd see in a pie,' Bjork said.

They were all found growing on various kinds of coniferous trees in the rainforest, and range in colour from onyx to white to pink to russet brown to orange to grey.

Bjork and Spribille have also identified 40 other species as new as well, but it will take more study and research before they can confirm them as such, Spribille said. He expects that to take another two years.

The scientists decided the Interior rainforests would be a good place to look for lichens because they are so biologically rich and varied.

'The rainforests of British Columbia have an extraordinary diversity of conifer species and micro-habitats,' Spribille said. 'Every valley is different from the next. There are lots of different climatic variations and lots of different tree combinations.'

With so many unique and varied habitats to search, he believed it would be only a matter of time before new discoveries were made.

'[Lichens] are very finicky about what they grow on and exactly where,' Spribille said. 'That's part of the art, as it were, of learning how to look for them.'

While he and Bjork can't say for sure precisely what purpose they serve in the B.C. forest, University of B.C. lichenologist Trevor Goward says they are important throughout the Northern Hemisphere for providing food to birds and insects, and for fixing nutrients in the atmosphere -- nitrogen and phosphorus among them -- and then transferring them to the ground -- something vital to all of us.

In the B.C. Interior, they are especially important as winter food for the endangered mountain caribou. During the winter when the snow is deep, Goward says, lichens growing on trees are often the only food sources the caribou have.

As discoverers of these new lichens, Spribille and Bjork also have the privilege of naming them. While they're proud of their achievement, vanity has no place in scientific nomenclature, so none of the lichens will be named the Spribille or the Bjork.

Instead, the scientists say, they will be given Latin names that refer to the areas where they were found or to what they look like.

'We figure out what's most distinct about the species and name it that way,' Bjork said.

I try to name them in ways that will help other people going out to look for them to get an image,' said Spribille. 'So they might refer to the place they grow or how they look.'