ABOVE: WIKIMEDIA, KATJA SCHULZ
Up until 2016, lichen was thought to be a partnership between one alga and one fungus, the classic symbiotic relationship. Then came the observation than in fact lichen harbors two types of fungi—an ascomycete and a newly identified basidiomycete yeast.
The team that had made this discovery has now found a third fungal associate in lichen. Reporting in Current Biology today (January 17), Veera Tuovinen of the University of Alberta and her colleagues describe wolf lichens (Letharia) that are made up of an alga along with three types of fungi: the ascomycete and two basidiomycetes.
“What this means in concrete terms to the overall symbiosis is the big question,” says coauthor Hanna Johannesson of Uppsala University in a press release. “What we are finding now is basically what researchers since the 1800’s would have liked to know—who are the core players, what function do they perform, ...
