Looks Like Lichens Aren't Two, They're Three

[Recusant]

An inspiring story, and a really cool discovery.

"How a Guy From a Montana Trailer Park Overturned 150 Years of Biology" | The Atlantic

In 1995, if you had told Toby Spribille that he'd eventually overthrow a scientific idea that's been the stuff of textbooks for 150 years, he would have laughed at you. Back then, his life seemed constrained to a very different path. He was raised in a Montana trailer park, and home-schooled by what he now describes as a "fundamentalist cult." At a young age, he fell in love with science, but had no way of feeding that love. He longed to break away from his roots and get a proper education.

. . .

You've seen lichens before, but unlike Spribille, you may have ignored them. They grow on logs, cling to bark, smother stones. At first glance, they look messy and undeserving of attention. On closer inspection, they are astonishingly beautiful. They can look like flecks of peeling paint, or coralline branches, or dustings of powder, or lettuce-like fronds, or wriggling worms, or cups that a pixie might drink from. They're also extremely tough. They grow in the most inhospitable parts of the planet, where no plant or animal can survive.

Lichens have an important place in biology. In the 1860s, scientists thought that they were plants. But in 1868, a Swiss botanist named Simon Schwendener revealed that they're composite organisms, consisting of fungi that live in partnership with microscopic algae. This "dual hypothesis" was met with indignation: it went against the impetus to put living things in clear and discrete buckets. The backlash only collapsed when Schwendener and others, with good microscopes and careful hands, managed to tease the two partners apart.

. . .

In the 150 years since Schwendener, biologists have tried in vain to grow lichens in laboratories. Whenever they artificially united the fungus and the alga, the two partners would never fully recreate their natural structures. It was as if something was missing—and Spribille might have discovered it.

He has shown that largest and most species-rich group of lichens are not alliances between two organisms, as every scientist since Schwendener has claimed. Instead, they're alliances between three. All this time, a second type of fungus has been hiding in plain view.

[Continues . . .]

[Tank]

Still goes to show there's room for the new idea?

[Dave]

Also indicates that that kind of intelligence appears in trailer parks - barrios, flavellas, shanty towns, Indian slums . . .

How much genius are we wasting? Brains are a function of genes, not privilege. It's recognition and opportunity that is missing.

[Bad Penny II]

That's why we need a wall.
That's why I don't give,
fkn foreign aid projects.
Think of your local yokel
fk them foren trade deals


When I started out with this post I was doing something completely different but it ended up being my submission for Trump poet laureate.
I hope I have your vote.

[xSilverPhinx]

I don't care much for algae and fungi but this is very interesting.

[Ecurb Noselrub]

That's why we need a wall.
That's why I don't give,
fkn foreign aid projects.
Think of your local yokel
fk them foren trade deals


When I started out with this post I was doing something completely different but it ended up being my submission for Trump poet laureate.
I hope I have your vote.

*snicker* - you are worthy.