Abstract
Lichens are widely utilized as indicators of air quality, forest health and climate change. In Central Europe, specific lichens have been designated as climate change indicators; however, the lichen biota of central Europe has been substantially altered by air pollution and only re-established during the past decades—complicating the interpretation of recent changes in lichen composition. To assess their validity as climate change indicators, we aggregated georeferenced records of these taxa and compared their historic and modern distributions. Modern distributions substantially differed for fewer than half of the indicator taxa with sufficient data to enable evaluation—reinforcing their utility as climate change indicators. However, modern distributions for approximately half of the taxa evaluated were largely confined to historically suitable climates—raising questions about their utility as climate change indicators. We were unable to model historic distributions for nearly two-thirds of all indicator taxa due to insufficient data. About one-third of these had multiple modern records but one or fewer historic records, suggesting they may indeed be expanding their range; however, about half had comparable or greater numbers of historic records relative to modern records, complicating their interpretation as climate change indicators. Together, our work illustrates that distributions for fewer than half of the lichen climate change indicators have substantially shifted in the recent past, and calls into question whether the remaining designated taxa are indeed strong positive indicators of climate change. We argue that more quantitative, evidence-based derivations of climate change indicators are required to accurately detect climate change.
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Data availability
Data are available at https://github.com/mpnelsen/Lichen_Climate_Change_Indicator_Europe
Code availability
Code is available at https://github.com/mpnelsen/Lichen_Climate_Change_Indicator_Europe
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Acknowledgements
Andreas Beck and Robert Lücking are thanked for assistance with collections in M and B, respectively. We thank those involved in the review process for constructive feedback. All analyses were conducted at The Grainger Bioinformatics Center (Field Museum).
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Negaunee Integrative Research Center (Field Museum), The Grainger Bioinformatics Center (Field Museum).
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HTL conceived the project, MPN and HTL gathered data, MPN analyzed data, MPN and HTL wrote the manuscript.
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Communicated by Pradeep Kumar Divakar.
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Nelsen, M.P., Lumbsch, H.T. A data-driven evaluation of lichen climate change indicators in Central Europe. Biodivers Conserv 29, 3959–3971 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-020-02057-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-020-02057-8