Special Interest Group Meeting

Species delimitation in lichens: using morphology and molecular markers to find species boundaries

S. Pérez-Ortega¹,² & C. Printzen²; ¹Instituto de Recursos Naturales, Centro de Ciencias Medioambientales CSIC, E-28006, Madrid, Spain, ²Abt. Botanik und Molekulare Evolutionsforschung, Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, D-60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Species are keystones in biology and have a major importance in many fields, such as ecology or conservation biology. Although all biologists have an approximate idea of what a species is, the recognition of species in nature is usually not straightforward. Species are evolutionary lineages and for their recognition several lines of evidence should be used. We show our results with a group of three closely related taxa from the genus Lecanora (Lecanorales, Ascomycota), using two molecular markers as well as morphological, chemical ecological and geographical data to assess species boundaries. Problems in species delimitation inherent to the nature of lichens are discussed.

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