Delmarva Lichens: An illustrated manual

Abstract

***AVAILABLE ONLINE VIA JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/e26976761

Delmarva (also known as the Delmarva Peninsula), the name itself at once invites questions and invokes history. Just as the name is an aggregation (of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia), so is the land an aggregation of floras and faunas, of political units and cultures, of times and places. Situated between the Chesapeake Bay, America’s beleaguered estuarine jewel, the Delaware Bay, an area of critical global importance to migrating shorebirds, and the inexorably rising waters of the Atlantic Ocean, Delmarva is a vast peninsula defined by coexistence and contrasts, a meeting place of north and south, of urban and rural, of past and future. Like Delmarva, lichens are also defined by coexistence and contrast. They are among the most remarkable products of evolution: fungi that have entered into obligate symbioses with algae and cyanobacteria. Together the two form complex and striking structures unlike any other in nature. While this specialized lifestyle has allowed lichens to survive, and even thrive, in nearly every ecosystem on land, it also means these fungi cannot survive on their own. In fact, lichens are extremely sensitive to habitat loss, degradation and disturbance. Lichens have long been an integral component of the Delmarva landscape. They serve important functions in the environment, supplying food and shelter for animals, and providing ecosystem services that ultimately benefit human welfare and society. As we show in this book, while the link between lichens and Delmarva in the past is clear, how exactly they fit into the narrative for the future of Delmarva is an open question. We wrote this book with the goal of providing a resource that would open the world of these neglected species to anyone who wanted to learn about them. Our work draws on more than four years of detailed study in the region, trudging through swamps and reveling in beaches. There are many resources to learn about, identify and appreciate other groups of Delmarva biodiversity, such as birds and wildflowers. Yet to date there has never been such a resource for lichens. In this volume we treat the 299 species of lichens that have been documented from Delmarva to date, all of which are presumed to be native. This includes not just the macrolichens, some of which have been treated elsewhere, but also the microlichens that have long been neglected in North American floras. For each species, we provide a description, a discussion of its distribution and ecology, a proposed conservation rank, and a comparison with similar species. We have also assembled a discussion of Delmarva natural history, checklists that are arranged alphabetically and evolutionarily, and a complete set of identification keys. A distribution map for each species is also included that shows the range of the species in the context of the broader Washington D.C. metro region, and contrasts the historical occurrences with those from modern times. Nearly all of the species are illustrated with color photographs. Our hope is that publication of this work will prove to be a turning point for the lichens in the Mid-Atlantic Region, serving as inspiration to explore and appreciate a long-neglected component of biodiversity. While the book focuses on Delmarva, it covers the majority of species that occur along the Atlantic Coast from Norfolk, Virginia, to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Thus the area covered by this book includes the metropolitan areas of Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York.