Sylvia Duran Sharnoff obituary

Russian biologists and Symbiosis

Herbarium TNS, Japan

Australasian Lichen Society

Sylvia Duran Sharnoff - An obituary

It is with great sadness that I announce the death of Sylvia Duran Sharnoff, a nature photographer and lichenologist of great talent and dedication. As many of our members know, Sylvia is an author of the forthcoming book, Lichens of North America, together with her husband and co-photographer, Stephen Sharnoff, and myself. Sylvia fought cancer valiantly for three and a half years, but lost her battle on 31^st December 1998, just after her 54^th birthday. Her superb photographs of lichens are well known from her many popular articles (together with Steve) in magazines such as Smithsonian Magazine, Equinox, and most recently, National Geographic (February 1997). She and Steve also illustrated the recent Macrolichens of the Pacific Northwest by Bruce McCune and Linda Geiser, and contributed many lichen photographs to several books in the Audubon Nature Guide series. A travelling exhibit of their lichen photographs was produced by the Oakland Museum, and has travelled widely in both Canada and the United States. Sylvia and Steve produced an exciting website at www.lichen.com showing over 100 of their photographs. Sylvia was born and raised in California where her father, Victor Duran, was a scientific photographer at the University of California at Berkeley. The elder Duran taught Sylvia photography and passed on his deep interest in photographing fungi, slime moulds, and lichens. Sylvia, in turn, shared her knowledge of photography with Steve, who is now an accomplished nature photographer in his own right, and is carrying on the task of completing preparations for the book on North American lichens. Sylvia's prodigious talents in both photography and writing, her insistence on excellence in everything she did, as well as her wonderful sense of humour and adventure, will be sorely missed by all who knew her.

Irwin M. Brodo, Ottawa

Russian biologists and the role of Symbiosis in Evolution

There is a book which I recommend as a good example of the breakdown in communication between Lichenologists and Evolutionary Biologists. Khakhina, L.N. 1979 (1992): Concepts of Symbiogenesis (in Russian). Leningrad: Akademie Nauk, URSS (Soviet Academy of Sciences). Of course, I read it in English: L. Margulis and M. McMenamim (eds.): Concepts of Symbiogenesis: a Historical and Critical Study of the Research of Russian Botanists. 177pp, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1992. ISBN- 0-300-04816-5. - I never found any reference to the evolutionary ideas of Elenkin and/or Merezhkovsky in the current lichenological literature, and evolutionary biologists who consider Merezhkovsky's Symbiogenetic Theory as a potent idea that invited a novel approach to the evolutionary process in the universe of living nature, belonging to the future, not to the time in which he lived, are completely unaware of Merezhovsky's work on lichens. I strongly recommend this book to Lichenologists interested in evolutionary views. It is not easy to find in bookshops, but L.Margulis told me that she is trying to edit a new version in English with another publishing house. - Although almost unknown to Lichenologists, Russian Biologists, in the early 1900s, emphasized the role of symbiosis in evolution. In Russia, more than in Western countries, critical attitudes toward classical Darwinism were much stronger in Botany than in Zoology. Botanists felt unconfortable with natural selection - the struggle for existence - as the primary moving force of evolution: predatory drive as a motor of evolution was not so obvious for plants, and the developments of Plant Physiology brought the advanced methods of Physics and Chemistry into the domain of plant studies, which generated a myriad of questions that did not fall within Darwinian concepts. One of these botanists, Konstantin Sergeivich Merezhkovsky, studied lichens during the Kazan period of his career (1902-1914), with special attention to vagrant Aspicilias. Lichens became an attractive subject in Biology after 1879, when A. De Bary, introducing symbiosis as a biological concept, established that: "they represent an evolutionary product of the symbiotic association of a fungal and an algal species that normally exist as entirely different taxa". Lichen studies paved the way to investigations on symbiosis as a mechanism of evolution. In the first years of this century, Merezhkovsky argued that: "evolutionary transformation can occur by the integration of symbionts, two or more simple organisms differing in phylogenetic classification". He first presented his views in 1905 (The nature and Origins of Chromatophores in the Plant Kingdom), just after his morphological monograph On the Morphology of Diatom Algae. Later, in two textbooks of 1909 (A concise course on Cryptogamic Plants) and 1910 (A concise course on General Botany) he treated the origin of algae, interpreted as a polyphyletic process: "blue-greens, composing a varied collection of pigments, entered into symbioses with colorless; and also blue-greens of one type established themselves in mastigophorans that possesed one or two equal or unequal flagella". He concluded that algal types originated independently from seven to eight different colorless mastigophora, rendering impossible the assumption of the origin of plastids by cytoplasmic differentiation. The role of symbiosis in evolution stands out in all of Merezhkovsky's work. He suggested (in 1909) the term symbiogenesis, documented its evolutionary significance in the origin of cell structure, and attempted an integration with ideas about hereditary features regulated by the nucleus. He also formulated an evolutionary concept, the Theory of Symbiogenesis: "on the basis of so many new facts arisen from cytology, biochemistry and physiology.... It appears desirable to attempt once again to raise the curtain on the mysterious origin of organisms...I have decided to undertake such as an attempt and...I propose a new theory on the origin of organisms, which, in view of the fact that the phenomenon of symbiosis plays a leading role in evolution, I propose to name the Theory of Symbiogenesis". In his last article, The Plant as a Symbiotic Complex (Geneva, 1920), he gave a more detailed definition of this term: "I called this process symbiogenesis, which means the origin of organisms through the combination and unification of two or many beings entering into symbiosis". Merezhkovsky's views on the significance of symbiosis laid the framework for phylogenetic systematics. His ideas attracted the attention of several researchers. Takhtadzhyan (1973, 1975) helped to improve the status of symbiogenetic studies in the Soviet Union by putting his great reputation and authority behind it: "Modern science, particularly molecular biology, had rejected some of the classical explanations of the origin of eukaryotic cells, but had generally accepted classical views on the kinetic center, chloroplast and mitochondria...as having substantial significance for understanding the evolution of higher taxonomical units...What is incomprehensible is that, in certain research, any reference to Merezhkovsky's work is absent". These words should be meditated by Lichenologists! - Curiously, the most extensive criticism of symbiogenesis in Russia came from an outstanding botanist and lichenologist, Alexandr Alexandrovich Elenkin. He first opposed the concept in 1907. This negative attitude characterized his subsequent works, where he treated such questions as the nature and classification of cyanoses, symbiosis in general, and lichen evolution. Only at the end of his life did his attitude change. The notions lichen and lichenous symbiosis were interpreted in the light of Darwin´s work (Elenkin, 1940), with a serious attempt to re-evaluate the entire concept of symbiogenesis. Elenkin's views on evolution were original, they developed as he considered the results of his own experiments on symbiotic relationships in plants, as well as his general philosophical studies. Elenkin criticized symbiogenesis: in his paper of 1922: New works in foreign and Russian journals relating to my theory of endoparasitic saprophytism and the law of dynamic equilibrium in the components of lichenous symbiosis, he wrote: "I recognize the logical permissibility of the theory of symbiogenesis but I cannot acknowledge it as correct... the classification of units of lichens proceeds on the basis of the traits (the structure of the body) of only one of the components, the fungus. When I say lichen, then, in a systematic sense, I mean only one organism, that is, a fungus...The recognition of lichens as integrated organisms led to serious misunderstandings of classification". Even now the problem of lichen classification is not resolved, as we know well! Along with Khakhina's interpretation, Elenkin's views on evolutionary processes underwent a crisis at the end of the 1930s: till that time, the idea of a lichen as a consortium was alien to him. His subsequent understanding of lichen evolution stemmed from an acknowledgement of Darwinism, and lichens were treated as integral living units: "lichen life is regulated by a unit of internal organizations, in which the alga is the photosynthetic apparatus. The perfection of the internal regulation of lichen components is manifested in the presence of certain specific traits (the ability of vegetative reproduction, the independence of feeding on the substrate, and so forth). These traits guarantee the lichen a great deal of endurance, and a place as pioneers among plants...under extreme circumstances. Only if we understand lichens as unique, integral organisms...do we get a clear picture of their evolution on the light of the creative role of natural selection". Having acknowledged the lichen as a unique, wholly independent organism, Elenkin reconsidered symbiogenesis, agreeing with it in respect to lichen evolution, but he maintained his critical attitude toward symbiogenesis as a universal theory.

Eva Barreno,Valencia

Lichenology at the Herbarium TNS in Japan

The Herbarium TNS at the National Science Museum in Tokyo was, from its foundation in 1931, located in downtown Tokyo. In 1995 it was relocated to a new, modern building at the Botanical Garden in the small town Tsukuba, located about 60 km northeast of Tokyo. The herbarium, arranged in alphabetical order, is stored in rooms with air conditioning and without windows. The building is equipped with a molecular laboratory, and others for culturing lichens, SEM, TLC, HPLC, as well as dissecting microscopes. Three lichenologists are working there: Prof. H. Kashiwadani is the head, working on the taxonomy of Ramalina and Physcia s.lat. Since 1994 he has issued the exsiccata Lichenes Minus Cogniti Exsiccati. K.H. Moon (South Korea), works on the taxonomy of Rimelia and related genera; she finished her Ph. thesis in Tsukuba in 1997. Y. Ohmura is a Ph.D. student working on the taxonomy of Usnea in Japan. G. Thor, from Uppsala, will stay in Tsukuba three months in 1999 (April to June) on a grant from the Swedish-Japanese Foundation, working on the lichens of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. The main lichen herbarium, and the separately kept exsiccata and type specimens, comprise ca. 125,000 specimens. Information in English, about the ca. 700 type specimens will be available soon on the home page of the Museum. The herbarium includes material collected by Y. Asahina, H. Kashiwadani and S. Kurokawa from Japan, as well as specimens from other parts of eastern Asia (China, Indonesia, Nepal, Papua-New Guinea, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, etc.), and a rather large set of specimens from Europe (mainly old material), America, Antarctica and Australia. Several thousands of specimens in the Asahina herbarium, were not earlier incorporated in the main collection but will be included before the end of 1999. Asahina's herbarium, beside his own collections, also includes specimens sent to him by Japanese and overseas collectors. Other Japanese collectors, such as T. Inobe, M. Togashi and A. Yasuda, also provided material stored in TNS, which is now being incorporated in the main herbarium. The names of localities on the envelopes, earlier written only in Japanese, are being translated into English before the collections are incorporated. Other important, old Japanese collections, stored at other herbaria than TNS, include those by M. Sato and P.U. Faurie. Unfortunately, the collections by M. Sato are, at least for the time being, difficult to study, being stored in boxes at the Ibaraki Prefectural Museum. The collections by Faurie, housed at Kyoto University (KYO), include many type specimens: this material is available for study, but is not yet stored in an appropriate way. In 1995 a guest-house was built in connection to the herbarium building in Tsukuba. Lichenologists are most welcome to visit the herbarium, and stay in the guest rooms, which have a kitchen, bath room, TV and a washing machine, and are available at a subsidized low price (ca. 15 US$ per night in 1999, including sheets). Only about 1,500 lichen species are known from Japan, a country extending through a wide range of vegetation zones. Even though most of Japan is temperate, in the north and at high altitudes there are true Alpine habitats above timberline, while in the south there are tropical rainforests. The real number of lichens occurring in this country is probably at least twice the presently known lichen flora: projects involving Japanese material, as well as visits in Japan, are very much appreciated. The ca. 2,000 specimens of crustose lichens and lichenicolous fungi collected by G. Thor from his stay in Tsukuba (1994-1996), are also available for loan. The material, from almost all Japan, is mostly determined to the genus level, and includes several genera which are new to Japan. In 1998, the postcodes were changed: please, note the slightly modified address of the herbarium: Dept. of Botany, National Science Museum, 4-1-1 Amakubo, Tsukuba-City, Ibaraki, Japan 305-0005, e-mail: hkashiwa@kahaku.go.jp.

H. Kashiwadani, Tsukuba-City, and G. Thor, Uppsala

Australasian Lichen Society - Address: Box 320, Nelson, New Zealand. - Contact person: W. M. Malcolm (address as above), phone & fax: (+64) 3-545-1660, e-mail: nancym@clear.net.nz - Founded in 1974, the Society presently has over 70 members. It promotes all aspects of the study of lichens in Australasia. It publishes the refereed journal Australasian Lichenology twice a year, in January and July. Each subscription is for 10 issues over a 5-year period, and costs between 25 and 40 NZ$ depending on the address. The journal editors welcome newsworthy items by lichenologists who are studying Australasian lichens or who are visiting the region. Colour plates are available at low cost, and the journal cover is printed in colour. Further information can be obtained by e-mail, fax or phone, or from the back cover of a recent issue.