Noteworthy Lichenized and Lichenicolous Fungi of Open-Canopy Oak Stands in East-Central Europe
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172 Herzogia 31 (1) Teil 1, 2018: 172–189 Noteworthy lichenized and lichenicolous fungi of open-canopy oak stands in east-central Europe Paweł Czarnota*, Helmut Mayrhofer & Andrzej Bobiec Abstract: Czarnota, P., Mayrhofer, H. & Bobiec, A. 2018. Noteworthy lichenized and lichenicolous fungi of open-canopy oak stands in east-central Europe. – Herzogia 31: 172–189. Eighteen species of lichenized and two species of lichenicolous fungi from oak stands of east-central Europe’s rural landscapes are presented. Rinodina isidioides is new to eastern Europe and the Carpathians, Abrothallus microsper- mus is new to the Carpathians, Rinodina excrescens is new to the eastern Carpathians, Biatora pontica is new to the Polish Carpathians, Lecanora substerilis, Ramonia chrysophaea and Verrucaria viridigrana are new to the Polish Carpathians and Poland, and others are new to Hungary, Romania or Ukraine. Distinguishing characters are empha- sised and notes on ecology as well as global and Carpathian distributions are given. Open-canopy oak stands and solitary oaks in wood-pastures are important for the protection of the lichen diversity of the Carpathians and need the special attention of conservation authorities and local stakeholders. Zusammenfassung: Czarnota, P., Mayrhofer, H. & Bobiec, A. 2018. Bemerkenswerte lichenisierte und licheni- cole Pilze von lückigen Eichenbeständen in Zentral-Osteuropa. – Herzogia 31: 172–189. Achtzehn Flechtenarten und zwei lichenicole Pilze werden aus Eichenbeständen der zentralosteuropäischen ländli- chen Landschaft präsentiert. Rinodina isidioides ist neu für Osteuropa und die Karpaten, Abrothallus microspermus ist neu für die Karpaten, Rinodina excrescens ist neu für die östlichen Karpaten, Biatora pontica ist neu für die pol- nischen und östlichen Karpaten, Lecanora substerilis, Ramonia chrysophaea und Verrucaria viridigrana sind neu für die polnischen Karpaten und Polen, während andere Arten für Ungarn, Rumänien oder die Ukraine neu sind. Die Unterscheidungsmerkmale werden hervorgehoben und Notizen zur Ökologie und Verbreitung gemacht. Lückige Eichenbestände und freistehende Eichen der Waldweiden sind wichtig für die Erhaltung der Flechtendiversität der Karpaten und bedürfen besonderer Beachtung durch Naturschutzbehörden und lokaler Interessensgruppen. Key words: Carpathians, epiphytic lichens, lichen diversity, oak wood-pastures, rural landscape. Introduction Lasting for hundreds of years, traditional use of land, involving livestock grazing, in par- ticular cattle and sheep, was a driving factor responsible for the development of semi-natural wooded ecosystems throughout Europe. Although some cultures focused on grain production and used forested areas for grazing and hay-making, other cultures excelled in developing ex- tensive free-range wood-pastures (Rackham 2006, Hartel & Plieninger 2014, Hartel et al. 2015). Common to both systems are open woods or groves, dominated by oaks with wide, low set crowns and substantial parts of boughs and stems exposed to sunlight. In Central and Eastern Europe, legacies of such traditional management have been relatively well preserved in the outskirts of Carpathians, either as marginal oak-dominated former silvopastoral groves * Corresponding author Czarnota et al.: Lichenized and lichenicolous fungi of open-canopy oak stands in east-central Europe 173 or still functioning wood-pastures, such as in Transylvania, (Fischer et al. 2012, Hartel et al. 2013, Hanspach et al. 2014). As a conservation measure, this system is being restored on the local scale in Carpathian Basin in Hungary (Varga & Bölöni 2009). Except for their socio- economic importance, wood-pastures are valuable refuges of rich biodiversity due to the com- bination of grasslands and woody plants, including ancient trees (e.g. Bergmeier et al. 2010, Horák & Rébl 2012, Hartel et al. 2014). Traditional rural landscapes with groves and soli- tary veteran trees may be considered as a contemporary analogy of an ancient “savannah” – an important part of “primeval” temperate European landscapes (Vera 2000). In various biogeo- graphical regions of Europe, such trees are very often various species of oaks, Quercus spp., of which longevity, size and shape are conducive to the development of microhabitats used by lichens. Depending on whether a tree layer has a form of dispersed solitary trees, open-canopy woods (grown in the past for pannage, Szabó 2013), or self-established copses filled-in with dense undergrowth of shrubs and younger trees, the corresponding epiphytic communities vary accordingly, particularly with respect to the composition of nitrophilous, heliophilous and forest lichens (e.g. Jönsson et al. 2011, Leppik et al. 2011). Among various interesting species, oaks also harbour national or regional red-listed species, as well as species recognized as relics of ancient forests (e.g. Thor et al. 2010). Whilst the lichenological importance of wood-pastures and open-canopy groves in Western Europe and Scandinavia have long been acknowledged (e.g. Paltto et al. 2011, Leppik et al. 2011), such habitats have been of minor lichenological interest in the central-eastern part of the continent. Our study, being a part of the larger research project on oak woods in rural landscapes of the Carpathians, aimed to fill this gap of knowledge by reference to cultural landscapes of the Carpathian foothills. This paper presents selected results of the inventory, confined to the species, which so far have not been reported from at least one of the four Carpathian countries in which sample plots were investigated. Material and Methods Collections were made in oak groves and wood-pastures located at low altitudes of the Eastern or Inner Western Carpathians in four countries: Poland, Ukraine, Romania and Hungary (Fig. 1.). Most of the Polish (PL) studied stands represent abandoned silvopastoral oak groves (me- dian oaks age: 110 years), with dense hazel (Corylus avellana) undergrowth. The Ukrainian (UA) stands are younger (77 years) and are, except one with hazel, more open due to frequent grass burning (Ziobro et al. 2016). Both Hungarian (HU) and Romanian (Transylvanian, RO) study areas represent actual functioning wood-pasture systems, a combination of grasslands with semi-open, park-like groves, solitary trees and abandoned groves with dense undergrowth (median oaks age: 129 years in HU and 107 years in RO – A. Bobiec, unpublished). Certain records are also from neighbouring high forest oak stands, subject to conventional forest man- agement. Only epiphytes of Quercus spp. were collected and examined. The nomenclature of lichen-forming species mostly follows Wirth et al. (2013), with the exception of Agonimia borysthenica (Dymytrova et al. 2011), Biatora pontica (Printzen & Tønsberg 2003), Fuscidea arboricola, Lecidea nylanderi (Tønsberg 1992), Psoroglaena dictyospora (Vondrák et al. 2010), Rinodina isidioides (Giavarini et al. 2009), Rinodina subpariata (Resl et al. 2016, cf. incorrect spelling as R. subparieta) and Verrucaria viridi- grana (Breuss 1998). The nomenclature of lichenicolous fungi, marked with an asterisk (*), follows Czyżewska & Kukwa (2009). Specimens are deposited in the Gorce National Park Herbarium, Poland (GPN) and some duplicates of Rinodina are in the University of Graz 174 Herzogia 31 (1) Teil 1, 2018 Herbarium, Austria (GZU). For morphological characters a Zeiss StemiDV4 stereomicroscope was used. Hand-made apothecial or pycnidial sections mounted in water, KOH and HNO3 were analysed using a Zeiss Axiostar plus microscope. Secondary metabolites of sterile lichen species were examined by thin-layer chromatography (TLC) in the solvent system C according to Orange et al. (2001). Aluminum plates were used. Fig. 1. Geographic location of four study areas: PL – Poland, UA – Ukraine, HU – Hungary, RO – Romania. Czarnota et al.: Lichenized and lichenicolous fungi of open-canopy oak stands in east-central Europe 175 Species list *Abrothallus bertianus De Not. Hungary: Inner Western Carpathians, Bükk Mts, Bükk National Park, c. 3 km NE of Cserepfalu village, 47.96833°N/20.55889°E, alt. c. 300 m, bark of Quercus cerris in oak wood-pasture, 16.05.2015, P. Czarnota 8217 & 8255; ibid., 47.96861°N/20.55694°E, 14.05.2015, P. Czarnota 8224. Host: Melanohalea elegantula. New to Hungary. This is a worldwide distributed species reported mainly from Europe: Great Britain, Ireland Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, European Russia, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Motiejūnaitė 1999, Kocourková 2000 and literature cited therein, van den Boom & Clerc 2000, Scholz 2000, Llimona & Hladun 2001, Aptroot et al. 2008, Brackel 2009, 2015, Czyżewska & Kukwa 2009, Seaward 2010, Bilovitz et al. 2010, Zhurbenko & Tugi 2013, Diederich et al. 2016), Ukraine: Podilia (Pirogov & Shovhan 2015), Crimea (Khodosovtsev et al. 2013), as well as from North and South America (Triebel et al. 1991, Esslinger 2016), Asia: Turkey (John & Breuss 2004) and Russian Far East (Zhurbenko & Tugi 2013). A. bertianus was previously reported from the Polish part of Western Carpathians (Alstrup & Olech 1996, Kukwa & Flakus 2009, Bielczyk et al. 2016) and from the Ukrainian Eastern Carpathians (Kondratyuk et al. 2003 without certain locality, Malíček et al. 2018). It has also been reported from Hungary, but according to the latest checklist by Lőkös & Farkas (2009), this record is in fact A. caerulescens Kotte; therefore the records here