Discussion on the preceding papers

• Published in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Royal Society 1967
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Tottanfjella; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.1967.0019; https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstb.1967.0019

J. E. Smith . Dr Longton’s slides of orange patches of Xanthoria lichens on Antarctic cliffs were reminiscent of coastal cliffs in temperate regions. Is this lichen community essentially maritime in the Antarctic? R. E. Longton. The Caloplaca-Xanthoria community certainly resembles the associations of orange crustose lichens of coastal cliffs in temperate regions. It is particularly well developed on coastal cliffs in many places in the Antarctic, but smaller areas occur inland, for example in the Tottanfjella, some 300 km from the sea. There are other parallels between growth form, and indeed in the genera represented, in the cryptogamic vegetation of Antarctic and temperate regions, an example being the associations of lichens and cushion mosses on montane rocks. M. W. Holdgate. To what extent does South Georgia vegetation resemble that of the Maritime Antarctic in the composition and distribution of its cryptogamic communities? To what degree could one describe the plant communities of the former as corresponding to those of the latter, but with the superimposition of a vascular plant element?