Department of Geobiology, University of Göttingen, Goldschmidtstraβe 3, 37077, Göttingen, Germany.
Department of Plant Taxonomy and Nature Conservation, Faculty of Biology, University of Gdańsk, Wita Stwosza 59, 80-308, Gdańsk, Poland.
Sci Rep. 2019 Jul 17;9(1):10360. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-46692-w.
Lichens, symbiotic consortia of lichen-forming fungi and their photosynthetic partners have long had an extremely poor fossil record. However, recently over 150 new lichens were identified from European Paleogene amber and here we analyse crustose lichens from the new material. Three fossil lichens belong to the extant genus Ochrolechia (Ochrolechiaceae, Lecanoromycetes) and one fossil has conidiomata similar to those produced by modern fungi of the order Arthoniales (Arthoniomycetes). Intriguingly, two fossil Ochrolechia specimens host lichenicolous fungi of the genus Lichenostigma (Lichenostigmatales, Arthoniomycetes). This confirms that both Ochrolechia and Lichenostigma already diversified in the Paleogene and demonstrates that also the specific association between the fungi had evolved by then. The new fossils provide a minimum age constraint for both genera at 34 million years (uppermost Eocene).
地衣，由地衣形成真菌及其光合伙伴共生组成的共生体，其化石记录一直很差。然而，最近在欧洲古近纪琥珀中发现了 150 多种新的地衣，在这里我们分析了新材料中的壳状地衣。三种化石地衣属于现存的 Ochrolechia 属（Ochrolechiaceae，Lecanoromycetes），一种化石具有类似于现代 Arthoniales 目真菌产生的分生孢子器（Arthoniomycetes）。有趣的是，两种化石 Ochrolechia 标本中寄生着地衣真菌 Lichenostigma 属（Lichenostigmatales，Arthoniomycetes）。这证实了 Ochrolechia 和 Lichenostigma 两种真菌在古近纪已经多样化，并表明真菌之间的特定共生关系也已经进化。这些新的化石为这两个属提供了 3400 万年（始新世最上部）的最小年龄限制。
