Abstract
Terricolous lichens are relevant associates of biological soil crusts in arid and semiarid environments. Dunes are ecosystems of high conservation interest, because of their unique, vulnerable and threatened features. The function of lichens is affected by the changing seasons and different microhabitat conditions. At the same time, inland dunes are less investigated areas from the terricolous lichens point of view. We explored the effect of seasonal variation and different micro-environmental conditions (aspect) on the metabolic activity of five terricolous lichen species, representing various growth forms, in temperate semiarid grasslands. Populations of Cladonia foliacea, C. furcata, C. pyxidata group, Diploschistes muscorum and Thalloidima physaroides were investigated. Thalli sampled from the south-west and north-east facing microhabitats were studied by chlorophyll fluorescence analysis for 2 years. The present study aims to understand how changing climate (during the year) and aspect affect photosynthetic activity and photoprotection. Microclimatic data were also continuously recorded to reveal the background of the difference between microhabitat types. As a result, the air temperature, photosynthetically active radiation, soil temperature and vapour pressure deficit were significantly higher on south-west than on north-east facing microsites, where relative humidity and water content of soil proved to be considerably higher. Higher photosynthetic activity, as well as a higher level of photoprotection, was detected in lichens from north-east-oriented microsites compared with south-west populations. In addition, the difference between sun and shade populations varied seasonally. Since a species-specific response to both aspect and season was detected, we propose to investigate more than one species of different growth forms, to reveal the response of lichens to the changing environment in space and time.
Highlights
Dunes are dynamic and threatened ecosystems in temperate regions of Central-Europe
This paper presents how terricolous lichen species of different growth forms were able to acclimate to seasonal changes in their photosynthetic activity and photoprotection under different microhabitat conditions
The effect of microhabitat conditions Our results suggest that non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) is usually higher on shaded than on exposed microhabitats in the different investigated lichen species
Summary
Dunes are dynamic and threatened ecosystems in temperate regions of Central-Europe. These habitats are characterised byZsolt Csintalan deceased Section Editor: Gerhard RamboldMycol Progress (2020) 19:629–641 populations (e.g. Gauslaa et al 2006; Pirintsos et al 2011) or in thalli exposed to sudden changes in light conditions, especially in smaller thalli (Bianchi et al 2019a).Besides the long-term effect of different microhabitat conditions, seasonal variation of climate may cause significant changes in thallus anatomy (e.g. Holopainen 1982; Tretiach et al 2013) and in photosynthetic functioning (Lange and Green 2003). In spring than in late summer, but the opposite was observed by Vráblíková et al (2006). These studies clearly indicate that lichens can adapt to changing environments in different ways. These investigations were carried out mostly on epiphytic, forest-living or saxicolous lichens. Terricolous lichens can cover large areas; there are only a few studies about how different microenvironmental conditions affect the seasonal changes of photosynthetic functioning of different species in semiarid (temperate zone) grasslands Different climatic conditions fundamentally affect the photosynthetic process of lichens; it is important to collect information from as many diverse areas and habitat types as possible
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