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Naming rights for this new species of Bryoria or “Horsehair Lichen”

If you take a lichen to them, name them

Jun 24 2011/in News Coverage

The naming rights for two newly discovered B.C. lichens have been put up for auction by a pair of conservation groups.

“You can put your name [on] a charity or a building, and those will eventually fall down, but these names will be around as long as the name Shakespeare is around,” said Trevor Goward, who discovered the species. A renowned lichenologist, Mr. Goward’s name has been attached to at least five plant species by fellow biologists.

Proceeds from the two auctions will benefit B.C.’s The Land Conservancy (TLC) and the Ancient Forest Alliance.

While new lichens are discovered on an almost monthly basis, most of those are in the “dime-a-dozen” category of crust lichens, said Mr. Goward. The two lichens up for auction are from the much more prestigious “macrolichens” category.

They are also more celibate. Unlike most lichens, which reproduce sexually, the two up-for-auction lichens reproduce asexually. The Land Conservancy’s lichen also has the distinction of being a cousin of the Scottish lichens that are used to dye tartan.

Both species were discovered by Mr. Goward in or near B.C. rainforests as early as the 1990s. It took two teams of European researchers to plod through the world’s lichen literature before they could be confirmed as new species.

Naming rights auctions have emerged as a popular style of fundraiser in recent years, with groups selling off the names of everything from shrimp to butterflies to stars. In 2005, the Wildlife Conservation Society held a naming auction for a new species of monkey as a fundraiser to protect the monkey’s Bolivian habitat. Ultimately, gambling website GoldenPalace.com beat out Ellen Degeneres for the right to the monkey’s name with a bid of $650,000.

The Land Conservancy is doubtful it will be able to pull in monkey-sized levels of funding, but they are hoping for at least $350,000. An opening bid of $3,000 has already been filed, said Barry Booth, a TLC regional manager.

Founded in 1997, the Land Conservancy of B.C. works differently from most conservation groups in that, instead of canvassing government to conserve land, the Conservancy simply buys up conservation land itself. To date, the group has gathered up enough protected land to equal the size of Toronto.

The revenue from the lichen auction will go towards buying a well-trodden wildlife corridor located between two sides of a B.C. provincial park. The Land Conservancy is buying up 27 acres of land for $350,000. In return, the landowner is throwing on another 57 acres for free.

“When we do these kinds of projects … we’re always looking for a way to get the most for our conservation dollar,” said Mr. Booth.

The Ancient Forest Alliance, the other beneficiary of the lichen auction, works to nudge the B.C. logging industry towards logging second-growth, instead of old-growth forests.

Lichenologists, like deep sea researchers, are among the few scientists who still discover new species. Although new birds and rodents occasional show up in remote areas of South America, most land animals were named in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

“We’re interested in things that fly around and look pretty, but we haven’t really paid attention to where the real biodiversity is,” said Mr. Goward.

Original article: https://news.nationalpost.com/2011/06/18/if-you-take-a-lichen-to-them-name-them/

Your name could go on a lichen

Jun 24 2011/in News Coverage

If you’re liking lichen, you’ve got a chance to put your – or a loved one’s – name to one.

A botanist from the University of B.C. has donated the naming rights to two species of lichen he’s discovered to two environmental groups. The Ancient Forest Alliance and The Land Conservancy are auctioning off the right to name the species to the highest bidders.

Neither lichen can be found on Vancouver Island but the campaign raises awareness of the role these sybiotic union of fungi and algae play in the ecosystem.

“My idea was to try to help people set aside biologically critical land,” said Trevor Goward, a lichenologist with the UBC department of botany.

“I see old-growth forests as a biological archive.

They’ve been capturing the history, like a library. Yet we cut down these nodes of vast biological knowledge – these things have been accumulating for centuries, for millennia – and I just don’t think that’s right.”

Lichens are sensitive to pollution and disturbance and become rare in urban and industrial landscapes. Some lichens provide critical winter food for mountain caribou in B.C.’s inland rainforests and black-tailed deer in B.C.’s coastal rainforests.

The lichen on loan to the Ancient Forest Alliance is a bryoria or horsehair lichen, which forms elegant black tresses on branches of old-growth trees. The TLC’s lichen is a parmelia or crottle lichen which consists of strap-like lobes that are pale grey above and black below.

“We got our first bid [Friday] of $100,” said Ken Wu, executive director for the Ancient Forest Alliance.

“I hope people get it, that this is part of a bigger campaign to protect old growth.”

Those who want to make a bid to have one of the new species named after themselves or a loved one can visit the Ancient Forest Alliance’s website at www.ancientforestalliance. org or phone 250-896-4007.

The Land Conservancy can be reached at www.conservancy.bc.ca or by calling 1-877-485-2422.

Naming rights for new species up for auction online

Jun 24 2011/in News Coverage

Ever wanted your name permanently associated with a stationary life form that is part algae and part fungi and wholly underappreciated?

Now is your chance. The naming rights to two new species of lichen are being auctioned online, with the proceeds going to the Ancient Forest Alliance and The Land Conservancy of B.C.

Trevor Goward, curator of lichens at the University of British Columbia and author of several books, said in an interview Friday he discovered a new species of horsehair lichen in the mid-1990s in the Hazelton-Kispiox area and a new species of crottle lichen in the Clearwater Valley two years ago, both of them in old-growth B.C. forests.

With help from molecular lichenologists at the University of Helsinki in Finland and the University of Madrid in Spain, both species have been recently confirmed as unique, he said.

Goward has been studying lichens since the late 1970s and has already found about 20 new species.

“It’s like working in the Amazonian rainforest,” he said.

“So few people have looked at these things. What we don’t know is overwhelming.”

Scientific protocol dictates that the rights to name a new species go to the person who describes it, and in this case Goward is allowing those rights to be sold to the highest bidder.

The genus would remain unchanged, and the species name would have to be put into Latin form, he said.

For example, if the crottle lichen was named after someone named Smith, it would be formally Parmelia smithii.

“It’s like being present at a irth,” Goward said.

“We know the surname. What we’re deciding is what this baby will be called. The point is that the baby will last 70 or 80 years whereas this name will last for as long as civilization.”

Goward doesn’t care whether an individual or a multinational corporation wins, saying it’s all about raising money for conservation.

“Call it a gimmick or whatever. We’re a species that likes to name things. Very little money is going into conservation.”

To make a bid on naming the new species of horsehair lichen, visit www.ancient forestalliance.org The deadline is Oct. 2.

If you’d prefer to name the crottle lichen, visit conservancy.bc.ca

That deadline is Sept. 10.

Original Article: https://www.vancouversun.com/Naming+rights+lichen+species+auction+online/4969243/story.html#ixzz1QCpDWLGk