My brother was sending me pictures of his hike in Arizona this weekend, being like "is this a good lichen?" "is this a good lichen?" "what lichen is this?" and I wanted to be annoyed because he's my brother, but I was just so thrilled someone was engaging me in my interest! He sent me lots of pictures of what I presumed were A. socialis, but upon further investigation, some of those could have been sister species A. robiniae? Likely not since it has a more costal distribution, but it looks like a few inland samples have been collected. This electric-yellow crustose lichen grows in areolate patches up to 5 cm wide on volcanic rock. It has a waxy, lumpy texture, and is pitted with immersed, punctiform apothecia. A. robiniae can be distinguished from A. socialis by the former's brighter color, yellow apothecial disks, and its broader areole attachment points. Just like I did when going through my brother's pictures, a lot of folks just see bright yellow lichen and don't look any closer, assuming it's A. socialis, and so A. robiniae has probably gone overlooked throughout its range in California and Mexico, and its range may even extend into Arizona.
Mycorrhizal fungi are vital to ecosystems around the world, but remain largely understudied, especially in arid regions. They may prove crit
Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:
As the sprawl of homes begins to dissipate on the outskirts of Tucson, forests of saguaro cacti rise in its place, their arms twisting and twirling as if waving a welcome to the Sonoran desert. Fields of prickly pears and cholla cactuses, blooming creosote bushes and green-limbed palo verde trees spread beneath and between the beckoning icons of the Southwest.
“We look like we’re on a movie set,” said Justin Stewart as he drove into Saguaro National Park, where the towering cacti, many older than the state of Arizona, are the charismatic stars of the scene. But Stewart and his colleague, Jinsu Elhance, weren’t there for the saguaros, but to see some tiny players with big roles growing in the soil beneath them: mycorrhizal fungi.
Though invisible on the surface of the desert, researchers have found in recent decades that mycorrhizal fungi are a vital part of ecosystems around the world. The fungi form symbiotic relationships with most land plants, forming intimate relationships with root systems in which they trade water and nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus for carbon that they use to grow farther out, expanding the highway delivering nourishment to the plant. It’s a useful system anywhere, but especially in arid deserts like that in Saguaro National Park, where the land can be unforgiving. And the relationship’s benefits spread far beyond deserts, forests and grasslands, as the fungi sequester over 13 billion tons of carbon that could otherwise be warming the climate.
But despite their importance, how mycorrhizal fungi interact in various environments remains largely understudied, particularly in arid regions, where climate change is threatening those systems.
Stewart, an ecologist, and Elhance, a data scientist, are with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), an organization founded to map mycorrhizal fungi networks. The two arrived in Tucson in mid-March to learn what fungi support saguaros and how they help the cacti remain resilient to climate change and the rapid spread of invasive species.
“People think we know stuff about these really well-densely populated ecosystems,” Stewart said. “It’s actually one of the least-sampled places on Earth.”
So I've noticed a trend lately from my mutuals, that trend being discourse on desert ecosystems vs greening. A few things I want to point out to those who will listen:
There is no such thing as an "untouched" ecosystem on this planet. People live there, or have lived there, usually for millenia (the major exception being Antarctica). I saw this term pop up in discourse around the pyramids in Egypt no less. Do y'all really think EGYPT is an "untouched" ecosystem? Other deserts are not an exception here either. The American South West, the Australian Outback, these have had people living in them for a long time. People who then got killed and exiled recently which leads me to...
Wastelands while not a natural feature of deserts can be a real thing. Usually because the folks who tended the land are killed or displaced or both. Sometimes the desert really is a wasteland, almost always because of war and/or colonial violence.
Greenery is another point. Deserts can be green. Not all the time, not all deserts, but we should not use desert as an antonym of the color green. Ever seen a desert immediately after the one huge rain storm? Those places are very green because the plants are sucking up all the water they can while they can.
None of this is to say that there aren't valid criticisms of forest focused environmentalism that presents old growth forests as the absolute ideal of nature. But I'm seeing folks attack environmental advocates for restoring desert ecosystems because they think good nature is "untouched", "not green", or "what nature intended".
Why Is Spain's Bardenas Reales a Hidden Desert Wonder?
Bardenas Reales spans 42,297 hectares across southeastern Navarre—Europe's largest badlands formation and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. The desert's Martian landscape formed over 60 million years through Paleocene marine sediment deposits (exceeding 800 meters thick) followed by relentles
Why Is Spain's Bardenas Reales a Hidden Desert Wonder?
Bardenas Reales spans 42,297 hectares across southeastern Navarre—Europe's largest badlands formation and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. The desert's Martian landscape formed over 60 million years through Paleocene marine sediment deposits (exceeding 800 meters thick) followed by relentles
Can desert plants flower after just one rainstorm?
Desert ephemerals complete their entire life cycle in 6-8 weeks after a single rainstorm, germinating in just 3-5 days with 50-90% success rates when moisture, temperature, and light align Seeds remain dormant for 5-10 years waiting for three simultaneous triggers: soil moisture (0.5+ inches at 1-2
