Tree Branch Communities: lichen, fungi, liverworts & mosses

Science happens at many different levels - observational to experimental to publishable. More work is done behind the scenes than is published formally. The behind the scenes stuff provides ideas for serious work. I can only work on iNAT projects during my nature break walks because I have a job. If some one wants to pay me to spend more time on lichens and fungi I am available!
Documenting fallen branches and photographing them above and below and regionally along the length of each branch will provide a record of what species are found in tree top branch communities and show any species association of growth.
Some more preliminary observations I have noticed and would love to have some one experiment with follow. I am NOT getting much moss in the treetops, moss hops onto fallen branches after a long stay on the ground. I thought there were no mosses on the tree branches here but today I found tiny tufts of a moss. This moss bunch of 1 cm or so was in a tree branch knot! perhaps more water or nutrients? I also found moss bunches - just one tiny <1cm on in a Physcia millegrana covered branch. This is my hypothesis that species may form communities of a nonrandom sort benefiting each other mutualistically. I also noticed that in some iNAT photographs of Physcia millegrana I noticed a very similar tiny moss tuft species present! so maybe these species have a mutualism. This is why iNAT is so great! Other people can go look! and see! in the arkives!
I also found no polypores on my branches that fell. There are polypores on very old fallen trees here. Again today I found a branch, large diameter of a few inches, that did have several polypores on it!!! COOL!
One working hypothesis is that large branches can obviousy support more species diverse communities that smaller branches hence i use the ruler as a measure to check branch diameter for different species. I will be able to graph that! Again today I found an exception to this rule which is that larger branches have lichen and fungi and smaller ones less so. There are more fallen dead small branches devoid of species (I am NOT measuring this - a control that would be nice for some one else to do - no time to measure branch diameter in everything that falls to the ground). I have a new photo of an end branch of mm diameter with a HUGE foliose lichen growing on it - actually two samples! So lichen can grow large - several cm wide - on TINY BRANCHES! Another exception to the branch diameter hypothesis is that I am finding abundant jelly fungi on the smallest branch diameters!!! perhaps because these are true parasites? and lichen grow mostly on dead branches??? no idea - just a thought.
The largest fallen branch diameters do commonly provide the MOST DIVERSE COMMUNITIES species wise. I had one branch patch (not the entire branch - I am designating communicites perhaps by touching edges of species??? think about it and see what I can measure reasonably) with 4 species: two lichen, one fungi and one liverwort!!!

Posted on December 21, 2022 04:01 PM by ingrid_kaatz