my favorite thing about lichens is that
they’re always out there so anytime you
go on a walk and go on a bike go float
the river you can go out collect like
it’s into a winter when you’re skiing
you only see lichens so like until they
cover about seven percent of the Earth’s
surface Trustee like in this big leafy
macro lichens hair lichens big huge
lichens and some lichens that grow
really fast can grow up to three feet a
year and you got ones that grow really
slowly and live for ten thousand years
as a photographer when I’m out there
poking around I just see colors I see
shapes I’ve got over 16,000 collections
of lichens here
currently studio photography set up
where I can go out and collect lichen
samples and bring him back to the lab
here and set him up and control the
lighting so historically a lichen was
assumed to be a union between a single
species of fungus and the species of
green algae but when they come together
they form this unique structure unlike
the two individuals the algae
photosynthesizes and the fungus
producers of the structure and those two
come together and they live in places
where the individual parts alone
couldn’t and that’s what we thought of
lichens for the last hundred fifty years
the study was accepted in science
magazine and Toby the main often the
favor approached me and asked if I would
do a photo for the cover
[Music]
this person toby spray Bella walks in I
don’t know what he said hi I’m Toby I
work on likens please sit down
and so Toby brought me this problem he
said look his two lichens that were
clearly different but when we look at
their genes they were exactly the same
Native Americans used the edible horse
their lichen that brown stuff hanging
from trees and essentially make little
cliff flowers they knew that one was
yellow because it contained an acid
called volcanic acid and they knew that
that was toxic we sort of left with this
problem of they are different but we
don’t see it so so what is it that’s the
problem
we were stuck thinking about this idea
of one fungus one algae which is how its
taught in textbook it was totally wrong
it was absolutely wrong but what we
found was that there was a third layer a
separate distantly related fungi that
was an integral part of the symbiosis
[Music]
took us realizing that to change how we
thought about the symbiosis in general
we looked for this additional partner on
six different continents and in every
case we were finding it it started as a
small project in Montana between a
couple of people with different
backgrounds and ended up as this global
endeavor so without the whole group
working together we never would have
been able to study the organisms that
have to work together sometimes big
discoveries can come from really simple
questions it’s good reminder to keep an
open mind
you
[Music]
you
they’re always out there so anytime you
go on a walk and go on a bike go float
the river you can go out collect like
it’s into a winter when you’re skiing
you only see lichens so like until they
cover about seven percent of the Earth’s
surface Trustee like in this big leafy
macro lichens hair lichens big huge
lichens and some lichens that grow
really fast can grow up to three feet a
year and you got ones that grow really
slowly and live for ten thousand years
as a photographer when I’m out there
poking around I just see colors I see
shapes I’ve got over 16,000 collections
of lichens here
currently studio photography set up
where I can go out and collect lichen
samples and bring him back to the lab
here and set him up and control the
lighting so historically a lichen was
assumed to be a union between a single
species of fungus and the species of
green algae but when they come together
they form this unique structure unlike
the two individuals the algae
photosynthesizes and the fungus
producers of the structure and those two
come together and they live in places
where the individual parts alone
couldn’t and that’s what we thought of
lichens for the last hundred fifty years
the study was accepted in science
magazine and Toby the main often the
favor approached me and asked if I would
do a photo for the cover
[Music]
this person toby spray Bella walks in I
don’t know what he said hi I’m Toby I
work on likens please sit down
and so Toby brought me this problem he
said look his two lichens that were
clearly different but when we look at
their genes they were exactly the same
Native Americans used the edible horse
their lichen that brown stuff hanging
from trees and essentially make little
cliff flowers they knew that one was
yellow because it contained an acid
called volcanic acid and they knew that
that was toxic we sort of left with this
problem of they are different but we
don’t see it so so what is it that’s the
problem
we were stuck thinking about this idea
of one fungus one algae which is how its
taught in textbook it was totally wrong
it was absolutely wrong but what we
found was that there was a third layer a
separate distantly related fungi that
was an integral part of the symbiosis
[Music]
took us realizing that to change how we
thought about the symbiosis in general
we looked for this additional partner on
six different continents and in every
case we were finding it it started as a
small project in Montana between a
couple of people with different
backgrounds and ended up as this global
endeavor so without the whole group
working together we never would have
been able to study the organisms that
have to work together sometimes big
discoveries can come from really simple
questions it’s good reminder to keep an
open mind
you
[Music]
you
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