She is a renowned star of stage and screen, a media mogul and philanthropist. It is a previously unidentified \u201csymbiotic organism formed by close cooperation between a fungus and an alga.\u201d Now, thanks in part to an EWU biologist, that organism—a lichen—and the voluble celebrity—Oprah Winfrey—will be forever linked, at least in the annals of lichenized-fungi taxonomy.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Jessica Allen, a lichenologist and assistant professor of biology at EWU, and James Lendemer, an assistant curator at the New York Botanical Garden, found themselves puzzling over an unfamiliar lichen found growing on tree bark in rural Alabama. The leafy, jigsaw-puzzle-like \u201cfoliose\u201d lichen, so called because of those leaf-like lobes, didn\u2019t quite fit the characteristics of any known species. Back in the lab, chemical analysis showed a distinct profile, while an examination with ultraviolet light yielded a bright-yellow glow that further confirmed its uniqueness.<\/p>\n
![\"Jessica](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2019\/06\/JessicaAllen.jpg\")
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When it comes to the few dozen new lichens identified each year, naming rights belong to the discoverers. Because this glowing member of the genus Hypotrachyna<\/em> was found near Koscuisko, home town to—you guessed it—Oprah, Allen and Lendemer called it \u201cOprah\u2019s sunshine,\u201d or, as it will be known in the trade, Hypotrachyna oprah.<\/p>\n H. oprah<\/em> joins the roughly 20,000 lichen species already identified. There are plenty more waiting to be discovered; botanists estimate that only five percent of the world\u2019s fungi have been fully documented.<\/p>\n Researchers such as Allen and Lendemer are determined to lessen that deficit, a task motivated in part by scientists\u2019 growing awareness that lichens, always a crucial environmental player, are now emerging as an important \u201cbio-indicator\u201d of our planet\u2019s overall health.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though they are really small, lichens are actually important pieces of the whole, overarching ecosystem,\u201d says Allen. They are habitats for tiny invertebrates, she says, like water bears, nematodes and small worms. Insects use them for camouflage and for food. Slugs and snails also eat them, as do larger, more charismatic creatures such as deer \u2014 who depend on lichens for winter forage \u2014 as well as caribou and bighorn sheep that eat them year-round. Because lichens don\u2019t hold water and naturally produce antibiotic and anti-bacterial compounds, numerous bird species use them for nesting materials.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cAs far as humans go,\u201d Allen adds, \u201cmost lichens are really sensitive to the same air pollutants that cause health problems, so we use them for large-scale air quality monitoring worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n This wasn\u2019t the first time Allen and her research partner linked a new lichen to an A-List personality. \u201cJames and I named a species after Dolly Parton, I think, three years ago. So this was the second in our series of Southeastern lichen celebrities,\u201d she says with a laugh.<\/p>\n Allen, who earned a bachelor\u2019s degree from Eastern before completing a doctorate at the City University of New York, gets why some might think linking Dolly and Oprah to lichens is simply a ploy to capture the attention of, well, media organizations like this one. But there\u2019s nothing frivolous about it, she says.<\/p>\n \u201cSome people feel really strongly that you should give species\u2019 names that describe what they look like, only in Latin,\u201d says Allen. \u201cOur purpose was to honor two women who have accomplished some incredible things in their lives, women who are really strong philanthropists. It\u2019s also because there are just very few species named after women. We\u2019re honoring them for their work, but also highlighting this gap that we see in our nomenclature.\u201d<\/p>\n Make no mistake, she continues, lichen nomenclature is a serious business. \u201cThe name sticks with the organism, basically, forever,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can change the genus, change how it’s organized evolutionarily, change how it fits with our overall knowledge of how it and other species are related to one another. But unless someone demonstrates a flaw in the identification, that second name, Oprah, is stuck to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Allen does concede, however, that she and Lendemer aren\u2019t averse to using the glow of celebrity to give lichens a bit of a PR boost. On this score there is much work to be done.<\/p>\n In an otherwise informative webpage, for example, the U.S. Forest Service admits up front that \u201cnot many people know what lichens are, and who would? They seem as though they are from another planet!\u201d<\/p>\n Lichens are indeed odd organisms. Neither entirely fungus or algae, they exist in what biologists call a \u201cmutualistic relationship\u201d between the two. Lichens typically consist of a thallus \u2014 the vegetative body produced by the fungus \u2014 and a photosynthetic agent that feeds it, either algae or cyanobacteria (a bacterium sometimes mistakenly referred to as \u201cblue-green algae\u201d). Unlike plants, they do not have roots, stems or leaves.<\/p>\n Lichens grow very slowly, reproducing in both sexual and non-sexual ways. They need only air and rain to sustain themselves, and, also unlike plants, can shut down completely to survive long-exposures to drought and other extreme conditions.<\/p>\n Lichen-friendly substrates \u2014 the surfaces on which lichens grow \u2014 can be found all over, from mountain peaks to coastal marshes, from scalding savannahs to freezing tundra. One lichen, Xanthoria elegans<\/em>, even survived outside the International Space Station. But lichens seem happiest in warm places where there is plenty of water, air, nutrients and light.<\/p>\n The rural Southeast is one of those places, which explains in part why Allen and Lendemer spend so much time trudging through the backyards of southerners like Dolly Parton and Oprah Winfrey.<\/p>\n The discovery of H. oprah<\/em> happened, for example, while the two scientists were participating in the lichen-collecting workshop near the Alabama\/Mississippi border, about 50 miles from Winfrey\u2019s birthplace. The area is a classic biodiversity hotspot, home to astonishing range of plants, animals and, of course, lichens.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the last tailings of the Appalachian Mountains spilling down into the coastal plain of the Southeast,\u201d says Allen. \u201cDeciduous trees, mixed deciduous forests, really high tree diversity, pretty dense understory. It\u2019s basically, but not quite, subtropical. Really wet, lots of rain. A tropical influence without quite being subtropical.\u201d<\/p>\n Lichen hunts are decidedly low-tech: pinpoint a promising spot and start collecting. \u201cWe use wood chisels to pry them off wood, rock chisels to collect on rocks, clippers for lichens on limbs \u2014 these things are usually growing on trees, or on rocks or on the soil,\u201d Allen says, noting that she and Lendemer often attract the attention of curious, if standoffish, locals.<\/p>\n \u201cWe end up with whole pillow cases stuffed full of lichens \u2013 we look crazy, right? Most of the time they will give you a look, but they never say anything.\u201d<\/p>\n The researchers typically don\u2019t discriminate among lichens in the field, instead taking samples from pretty much every species they see. The reason, Allen says, is two-fold. One, it\u2019s easy to mistake one lichen for another. H. oprah<\/em>, for example, was likely confused with H. osseoalba<\/em>, another lichen also found in the warm, wet forests of the southeastern U.S.<\/p>\n The other reason involves a more general need to catalog what\u2019s out there. \u201cWe\u2019re basically just trying to document the full diversity of species in the area, preserving them so that other scientists can study them for years, even centuries, to come,\u201d says Allen. \u201cWe still have specimens from Darwin and earlier, some collections have samples dating back to the 1500s.\u201d<\/p>\n Back out in the field, newly collected lichens are plopped into paper lunch bags, Allen says, \u201clike you\u2019d send with your kid to school.\u201d<\/p>\n The scientists then record the lichens\u2019 location and note their substrate. Eventually, they\u2019ll haul them off to reside with older specimen in an herbarium, a building housing a preserved collection of plants and fungi.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have an herbarium here at Eastern actually,\u201d Allen says. \u201cThis work was mostly done at the New York Botanical Garden, which is the second-largest herbarium in the world. But here at Eastern we have our own slowly growing collection housed in the Science Building.\u201d<\/p>\n For specimen deserving of extra attention, like the lichen that became H. oprah<\/em>, a trip to the laboratory is next. Here state-of-the-art tools come into play. Dissecting microscopes and imaging software help scientists produce a detailed description of the lichen\u2019s physical characteristics. Analyses involving exposure to ultraviolet light \u2014 part of a process called thin-layer chromatography \u2014 helps determine how the lichen\u2019s compounds compare to previously documented species. Sometimes the scientists take tissue for genetic testing. The process, from collecting in the field to preparing their findings for publication, can take months, even years.<\/p>\n Allen says the effort is more than worth it, especially for researchers like her who love both lichens and the challenge they represent. The love part began, she says, back when she was an undergraduate at EWU, where she became enthralled by lichens\u2019 peculiar attractions.<\/p>\n \u201cI still think they\u2019re beautiful,\u201d she says. \u201cBut as a scientist, I like working with lichens because there is just so much we don\u2019t know about them, and so many contributions that, as a researcher, you can make to the field. And it\u2019s great to be here at Eastern, because there is so much that the students can do, as graduate or even undergraduate student researchers, that can substantially contribute to our body of knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n Allen and Lendemer\u2019s discovery was published in Castanea<\/em>, the journal of the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society. Oprah was unavailable for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thanks to an intrepid Eastern researcher, an \u2018odd organism\u2019 gets its turn in the spotlight. By Charles E. Reineke She is a renowned star of stage and screen, a media mogul and philanthropist. 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