Ticolichen

Ticholichen: Tho Costa Rican Lichen Biodiversity Inventory

TICOLICHEN is the first large-scale tropical lichen biodiversity inventory that combines well-developed local scientific infrastructure with international taxonomic expertise. It forms part of the Costa Rican Sustainable Biodiversity Development Initiative, a collaborative effort to unravel Costa Rica's organismic diversity, supported by funds from the World Bank, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), and the Dutch Government. TICOLICHEN complements the Survey of Costa Rican Macrofungi (NSF grant DEB 9972027 to Greg Mueller and Roy Halling) and the Survey of Costa Rican Wood Inhabiting Pyrenomycetes (NSF grant DEB 0072684 to Sabine Huhndorf and Fernando Fernandez), adding lichens as third, important fungal component to the National Biodiversity Inventory. With all PI's being located at a single place (The Field Museum) and collaborating with the same local institutions (INBio, Herbario Nacional, Universidad de Costa Rica), efforts are united to share scientific and logistic infrastructure while compiling one of the world's largest inventory of tropical fungi.

The lichen inventory is undertaken by three institutions: The Field Museum (Chicago), represented by the PI, Robert Lücking, Collections Manager (Mycology) and Adjunct Curator (Lichenology); INBio (Costa Rica), represented by Loengrin Umaña, Curator of Microfungi and Lichens and part of INBio's fungal taxonomic task-force; Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem (Germany) represented by Harrie Sipman, Curator of Lichens and scientific advisor for lichens of INBio's fungal taxonomic taskforce. Further collaborators include colleagues and students from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the Adviesbureau voor Bryologie en Lichenologie (Netherlands), the Karl-Franzens-Universität (Austria), the New York Botanical Garden, the Universidad Nacional (Costa Rica), the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and Duke University.

INBio is providing local scientific and logistic infrastructure, including sampling (under the auspiece of the National System of Conservation Areas, SINAC), processing, labeling, databasing, and deposition of specimens. The Field Museum and the Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, in close collaboration with the aforementioned colleagues and institutions, are providing taxonomic expertise, i.e. identification of specimens, selection of specialists for identification, revision of herbarium collections and type material, implication of taxonomic databases, and taxonomic training of curators, parataxonomists, and students during field and laboratory workshops. All groups are joining efforts in compiling and publishing identification tools of various sorts, using electronic and printed media, to regularly document the progress of the ongoing project.

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