Patrick Jung, Karen Baumann, Dina Emrich, Michael Schermer, Kai-Uwe Eckhardt, Gerald Jandl, Peter Leinweber, Felix Harion, Andreas Wruck, Martin Grube, Burkhard Büdel, Michael Lakatos
Over the decades our understanding of lichens has shifted to the fact that they are multiorganismic, symbiotic microecosystems, with their complex interactions coming to the fore due to recent advances in microbiomics. Here, we present a mutualistic-parasitic continuum dynamics scenario between an orange lichen and a lichenicolous fungus from the Atacama Desert leading to the decay of the lichen's photobiont and leaving behind a black lichen thallus. Based on isolation, sequencing, and ecophysiological approaches including metabolic screenings of the symbionts, we depict consequences upon infection with the lichenicolous fungus...
November 13, 2023: Mycologia