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Biological Soil Crusts: An Organizing Principle in Drylands pp 121–138Cite as

Structure, Composition, and Function of Biocrust Lichen Communities

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Part of the book series: Ecological Studies ((ECOLSTUD,volume 226))

Abstract

In this chapter we examine the structure, composition, and function of soil biocrust (i.e., biological soil crust) communities dominated by lichens. Lichens are composite organisms resulting from a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an alga or cyanobacterium. Biocrust lichens can tolerate a wide range of abiotic stresses such as desiccation, extreme temperature, and high light intensity, making them well adapted to life in arid, semiarid, and polar deserts where resources are limited and competition from vascular plants is low. The ability of some lichens to fix atmospheric nitrogen also gives them a competitive advantage over other organisms in environments that are recovering from disturbance. Biocrust lichens perform many important ecological functions such as providing habitat for microfauna, stabilizing soils, fixing nitrogen and carbon, and enhancing water flow through the soil. However, as with other biocrust taxa, they are highly susceptible to physical disturbances such as trampling by livestock, disturbance by vehicular traffic, and fire. Biocrust lichen ecology is hampered by a lack of information on the distribution of many taxa, difficulties of identifying small organisms, and the high cost of sampling environments where biocrust lichens are likely to form a major component of the surface biota. The adoption of morphological groups for classifying biocrust lichens has helped to simplify the study of biocrust community ecology, but more sophisticated DNA sequencing techniques are needed in order to better understand their ecology, distribution, and how they interact with other soil crust organisms.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the European Commission for funding the BioDiversa project SCIN as well as the local funding agencies for administration of the ERA network.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biology Department, Boise State University, 1910 University Drive, Boise, ID, 83725, USA

    Roger Rosentreter

  2. Centre for Ecosystem Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia

    David J. Eldridge

  3. Department of Botany, Swedish Museum of Natural History, 104 05, Stockholm, Sweden

    Martin Westberg

  4. Faculty of Biology, Plant Ecology and Systematics, University of Kaiserslautern, 67653, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Laura Williams

  5. Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Graz, 8010, Graz, Austria

    Martin Grube

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  1. Roger Rosentreter
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  2. David J. Eldridge
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  4. Laura Williams
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  5. Martin Grube
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Correspondence to Roger Rosentreter .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Multiphase Chemistry Department, Max Plank Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany

    Bettina Weber

  2. Plant Ecology and Systematics, Department of Biology, University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Burkhard Büdel

  3. Southwest Biological Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Moab, Utah, USA

    Jayne Belnap

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Rosentreter, R., Eldridge, D.J., Westberg, M., Williams, L., Grube, M. (2016). Structure, Composition, and Function of Biocrust Lichen Communities. In: Weber, B., Büdel, B., Belnap, J. (eds) Biological Soil Crusts: An Organizing Principle in Drylands. Ecological Studies, vol 226. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30214-0_7

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