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Unveiling annual growth chronologies from inter-nodal branch elongations in a fruticose lichen in southern Europe.
Journal article

Unveiling annual growth chronologies from inter-nodal branch elongations in a fruticose lichen in southern Europe.

  • Rodríguez-Peñate AE Departamento de ciencias de la vida, UD Ecología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Alcalá, ctra. Madrid-Barcelona km 34.6, 28805 Alcalá de Henares, Spain. Electronic address: albaelena93@hotmail.com.
  • Escudero A Departamento de Biología y Geología, Física y Química Inorgánica, Unidad de Biodiversidad y Conservación, ESCET, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, C/ Tulipán s/n, Móstoles, C.P. 28933 Madrid, Spain. Electronic address: adrian.escudero@urjc.es.
  • Martínez I Departamento de Biología y Geología, Física y Química Inorgánica, Unidad de Biodiversidad y Conservación, ESCET, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, C/ Tulipán s/n, Móstoles, C.P. 28933 Madrid, Spain. Electronic address: isabel.martinez@urjc.es.
  • Madrigal-González J Departamento de ciencias de la vida, UD Ecología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Alcalá, ctra. Madrid-Barcelona km 34.6, 28805 Alcalá de Henares, Spain; Climate Change Impacts and Risks in the Anthropocene (C-CIA), Institute for Environmental Sciences (IES), University of Geneva, 66 Boulevard Carl Vogt, CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland. Electronic address: Jaime.Madrigal@unige.ch.
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  • 2019-10-20
Published in:
  • Fungal biology. - 2019
Aridity
Cladonia rangiformis
Climate change
Fruticose lichens
Legacies
Lichenometry
Ascomycota
Climate
Europe
Humidity
Lichens
Mediterranean Region
English Techniques for retrospective analysis of size dynamics at annual resolution remain poorly developed in lichens in general, and fruticose lichens in particular. Only a few attempts in very high latitudes suggested that growth might be studied as a chronosequence of inter-nodal branch elongations. Here we evaluated, for the first time, this hypothesis in a dry Mediterranean environment using the lichen Cladonia rangiformis as a case study. Mixed models supported a strong positive relationship between humidity measured as precipitation/PET and inter-nodal branch elongations. Importantly, model selection suggested that (i) the number of intermodal elongations were a major determinant of stem elongation, and (ii) a second-order temporal autocorrelation denoted legacies of environmental influences at least over the next 2 y. The strong growth-humidity relationship, along with the potential legacies observed, support the idea that inter-nodal branch elongations could be used to reconstruct growth chronologies at annual resolution in drylands. This finding highlights the high vulnerability of these organisms to rising aridity, and opens a new venue for climate reconstruction and other potential applications in Ecology and Earth Science disciplines.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
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Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/131054
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