Opuscula Philolichenum, 12: 198-232. 2013. *pdf effectively published online 11December2013 via (http://sweetgum.nybg.org/philolichenum/) Lichens of the Bruce Peninsula, Ontario: Results from the 17th Tuckerman Workshop, 18-22 Sept. 2008 1 2 3 4 5 IRWIN M. BRODO , RICHARD C. HARRIS , WILLIAM BUCK , JAMES C. LENDEMER , CHRIS LEWIS , ABSTRACT. – An inventory of the lichens of Bruce Peninsula National Park and Fathom Five National Marine Park in the Georgian Bay area of southern Ontario was carried out by 30 lichenologists participating in the 2008 Tuckerman Workshop. A list of 370 species of lichens, related fungi and lichenicolous fungi was compiled, documenting that the parks are remarkably rich in lichens, including many rarities. Following the park inventory, an additional 21 lichens from Bruce County are listed based on the published literature and other recent collections. Twelve lichens, one related fungus and nine lichenicolous fungi are additions to the Canadian lichen flora: Acarospora moenium, Bagliettoa baldensis, Biatora ocelliformis, Caloplaca flavocitrina, Clavascidium umbrinum, Dermatocarpon dolomiticum, D. muhlenbergii, Heppia adglutinata, Lecania cuprea, Opegrapha mougeotii, Thelidium minutulum, Heteroplacidium compactum; Mycoglaena myricae; Capronia peltigerae, Lichenoconium erodens, Muellerella hospitans, M. ventosicola, Phaeopyxis punctum, Phoma cladoniicola, Plectocarpon cladoniae, Polycoccum minutulum, Tremella candelariellae. An additional 35 lichens, two related fungi, and 13 lichenicolous fungi are new for Ontario: Acarospora macrospora, Biatora chrysantha, B. turgidula, Biatorella hemisphaerica, Botryolepraria lesdainii, Buellia griseovirens, Caloplaca saxicola, C. subsoluta, Cladonia atlantica, Clauzadea monticola, Cliostomum leprosum, Diplotomma venustum, Enterographa zonata, Farnoldia hypocrita, Gyalecta foveolaris, Hymenelia heteromorpha, Lempholemma isidiodes, Lepraria caesiella, L. eburnea, Leptogium intermedium, Opegrapha rufescens, Placidium squamulosum, Porpidia contraponenda, P. macrocarpa f. nigrocruenta, P. soredizodes, P. superba, Pseudosagedia aenea, Psorotichia schaereri, Pycnora sorophora, Sagiolechia protuberans, Thelocarpon epibolum var. epithallinum, Trapeliopsis pseudogranulosa, Vezdaea acicularis, Violella fucata and Xylographa vitiligo; Epigloea pleiospora and Sarea difformis; Clypeococcum hypocenomycis, Cornutispora ciliaris, Lettauia cladoniicola, Lichenodiplis lecanorae, Marchandiomyces corallinus, Muellerella erratica, M. lichenicola, Nectriopsis parmeliae, Phoma cladoniicola, Pronectria robergei, Refractohilum peltigerae and Spirographa fusisporella. A total of 77 range extensions are presented, many of which are significant discoveries, but others of which represent the first Canadian records of species that have been found to be common and widespread in adjacent regions of the United States. With regard to lichens, the parks now constitute the best-studied area of their size in Ontario. Eiglera flavida is an additional report for Bruce County not collected on the workshop; it is also new for Ontario. Of the habitats visited in the park, the shoreline cliffs and adjoining forests at Halfway Log Dump are the most rich in species (223). Flowerpot Island was almost as diverse (196). Although somewhat less diverse, the alvars (with 149 species) also contained several remarkable records and a surprising number of species. 1 IRWIN M. BRODO – Canadian Museum of Nature, P.O. Box 3443, Station ‘D,’ Ottawa, Ontario, K1P 6P4, Canada. – e-mail: [email protected] 2 RICHARD C. HARRIS – Institute of Systematic Botany, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY 10458- 5126, U.S.A. – e-mail: [email protected] 3 WILLIAM BUCK – Institute of Systematic Botany, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY 10458-5126, U.S.A. – e-mail: [email protected] 4 JAMES C. LENDEMER – Institute of Systematic Botany, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY 10458- 5126, U.S.A. – e-mail: [email protected] 5 CHRIS LEWIS – Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources Species at Risk Branch 300 Water St., 2nd Floor South Peterborough, Ontario K9J 8M5, Canada. – e-mail: [email protected] 198 INTRODUCTION The Bruce Peninsula in southern Ontario, Canada, is approximately 100 km long and 38 km wide at the base. It extends northwestward into Lake Huron, segregating off Georgian Bay (Fig. 1). Together with Manatoulin Island to the west, it forms the northern edge of the Niagra Escarpment, a formation of Silurian and Ordovician sedimentary, carbonate rock that arches through southern Ontario and from Rochester, New York at one end to the west coast of Lake Michigan at the other (Lowes 1988; Wikipedia 2013). The Bruce Peninsula falls entirely within the “Humid High-Cool Temperate” ecoclimatic province (Ecoregions Working Group 1989). Its forest cover is a mixture of eastern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) over the thin, often wet, mainly calcium-rich soils, and mature, maple-dominated hardwood forest on deeper soils. After a brief visit to the Bruce Peninsula, in August of 2007 by the senior author, it was decided that the area would make an ideal venue for a Tuckerman Workshop. Tuckerman Workshops are organized by the Eastern Lichen Network (2013), generally once a year over four days, to study the lichens of some area of eastern North America. The first one was held in 1994 in the Catskill Mountains of New York and organized by Dr. Richard Harris of the New York Botanical Garden. Participants of the workshops are amateur and professional lichen experts, most with some field and lab experience. Prior to the workshop on the Bruce Peninsula there had been three previous workshops in Canada, two in Nova Scotia and one in Newfoundland. Two more have been held since, one in New Brunswick and the other on the Gaspé Peninsula of Québec. Previous compilations resulting from Tuckerman Workshops have either been authored by a single individual or have included all the participants. In this case the authors consist of the organizers of the trip (IMB and CL) as well as three of the participants who amassed most of the records and performed the great majority of identifications (WB, RH and JL). THE LICHENS OF ONTARIO: A BRIEF HISTORY. Previous work. The lichens of Canada are relatively poorly known. We estimate that there are about 3000 species in the country, but a catalogue or even a checklist has never been compiled. (One is now underway under the sponsorship of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada [COSEWIC].) Our poor knowledge is due in large part to the size and diversity of the country, as well as the few individuals who have concentrated on these organisms, even though lichens form an important and conspicuous part of the vegetation of the north (Kershaw 1977). Indeed, the farther north one goes, the greater the significance of the lichen flora as regards coverage and biomass (Kershaw 1978). The province of Ontario, extending from the temperate Carolinian forest in the southeast to the arctic Hudson Bay coast at Polar Bear Provincial Park, should have a rich and diverse representation of species. At the time of the Tuckerman Workshop, 822 species had been documented for the province as compared with about 960 for Québec and ca. 2000 for British Columbia (C. Lewis, C. Roy and T. Goward, respectively, personal communications). A survey of the lichens of Bruce Peninsula National Park and Fathom Five National Marine Park was particularly desirable because the parks are rich in calcium- containing rocks (limestone and dolomite), which provide substrate for a distinctive and inadequately studied segment of the lichen flora of the province (Eykes 2002). A review of early work on the lichens of Ontario is given in Wong & Brodo (1992) and Goward et al. (1998). A short history of lichenology in Ontario from the latter publication is reproduced below. (Additional comments are inserted in square brackets.) Among the first to collect Ontario lichens was the great American naturalist, Louis Agassiz. Agassiz sampled the rich lichen flora along the north shore of Lake Superior, and sent his collections to Tuckerman for identification (Tuckerman 1850). B. Billings and A.T. Drummond, both of Kingston, probably collected together, but only Billings published specifically on Ontario lichens (Billings 1862). Billings also identified the Great Lakes collections of Robert Bell (Bell 1861). [John Macoun, the Dominion botanist in Ottawa from 1881 until 1912, also collected many lichens from the Ottawa and Belleville areas as well as elsewhere in Ontario. His lichens were also identified by Tuckerman and other lichenologists of the day.] Other than J.H. Faull's (1913) list of common lichens near Toronto, almost no additional literature appeared dealing with Ontario lichens until the 1960s. Between the 1930s and the early 1970s, however, Roy Cain, a mycologist of broad interests and talents at the University of Toronto, did a great deal of collecting throughout Ontario. 199 Figure 1, topographic map illustrating the relative position of the Bruce Peninsula (denoted by arrow) within Ontario (darkened land mass), the Great Lakes (darkened water bodies) and the surrounding area (lighter regions with major adjacent states and provinces as labeled). Superimposed on the map are lines indicating the boundary between 1) the Mid and Low Boreal Ecoclimatic Zone and Humid High-Cool Temperate Ecoclimatic Zone (red line) and 2) the Humid High-Cool Temperate and Humid High-Moderate Temperate Ecoclimatic Zone (yellow line). Ecoclimatic zones follow Newmaster