Data and code for "Resource gradients drive the distribution and photobiont characteristics of two lichen species in a subarctic lava field" ...

• Main Authors: Ortiz, Guillermo, Botsch, Jamieson, Book, K. Riley, Ives, Tony
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2024
• Subjects: Iceland; Subarctic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10610894; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10610894

This project described how the distribution and morphology of two species of lichen varied along a transect perpendicular to Lake Myvatn in Iceland. All data were collected in a recent (1729) lava field and we focused on two species Flavocetraria cucullata and Peltigera leucophlebia. Lake Myvatn is famous for large midge (Diptera: Chironomidae) emergences of which many are deposited on land. Thus, the transect reflects variation in midge deposition. P. leucophlebia contains both green algae and cynaobacterial endosymbionts and thus is able to fix atmospheric nitrogen, while F. cucullata contains only green algae and is therefore dependent on environmental nutrients. We suspected that these species differed in their response to the midge-derived nutrient gradient. We measured the distribution of each lichen along a 400 x 15 m transect perpendicular to the lake, characterized their surrounding vegetation, and took thin sections of thalli on which we characterized photobiont thickness and chlorophyll-a ...