Talk:Bryophilous lichen

Bryophilous parasitism

@MeegsC

Lichen Biology - Thomas H. Nash (2008) Page.36

I'm not entirely clear on the meaning there but it seems to suggest that Bryophilous lichens are parasitic on living moss and hepatics. Specifically it says a small group of around 40 species is parasitic on live bryophytes. I presume this small group are all of the Bryophilous lichens and that this is the definition of the term but it isn't totally clear on that so I don't know if some of them are not parasitic. Lichens are new to me.

I think that is what Lichens of North America 2001 is referring to when it says living amongst the branches as Lichen Biology contains microscopic images showing this parasitic behaviour between the branches. Described as developing its thallus between the cuticle and leaf cells of the liverwort with leaf and stem cells invaded.

Lichens of North America doesn't contain the term 'Bryophilous' though and nor does the 2016 updated edition. So I think they are obscure and only represent a small number of species rather than categorising all lichens which grow on moss/hepatics. From a brief bit of reading I think the distinction is Muscicolous lichens are common and grow on the decaying mosses and liverworts whilst Bryophilous are less common (or less known/studied) and parasitic upon live ones. I'm not sure however so I don't want to state that in the articles until I am. 'Muscicolous' seems to be a far more commonly used term than 'Bryophilous' (in regards to lichen anyway) with vastly more journals on the subject so that suggests Bryophilous are uncommon and niche to me. Something to look into. MycoMutant (talk) 02:13, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

MycoMutant, perhaps it has more to do with where the authors are from? The British Lichen Society doesn't show the term "muscicolous" anywhere on their website (see their glossary of habitat terms here under "Substrata and position"). The Australian National Botanical Garden's pages also use "bryophilous" (see here). Incidentally, that page doesn't mention parasitic lichens, and neither does their page about the interaction between lichens and plants; it mentions lichens and bryophytes being potential competitors (towards the bottom of the page, under the bulleted list), but not parasites. So I'm not sure your splitting of the terms is correct! MeegsC (talk) 08:09, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Yeah I assumed at first it was just a synonym since the etymology on them basically means the same thing but then I saw some papers using both terms separately. The Fungi Biology book uses both terms too. I'll try to look up some of the references it is citing today but this material seems to be a lot less accessible than it is for mushroom forming fungi. It could be a regional difference or a more niche term that has only entered use for more recent research and isn't fully accepted. I'll see if I can look into it more. MycoMutant (talk) 11:37, 3 August 2022 (UTC)