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Transient populations in the British conservation priority lichen, Cladonia botrytes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2013

Rebecca YAHR ,
Brian J. COPPINS  and
Alexandra M. COPPINS
Rebecca YAHR
Affiliation:
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20A Inverleith Row, Edinburgh, EH3 5LR, UK. Email: r.yahr@rbge.ac.uk
Brian J. COPPINS
Affiliation:
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20A Inverleith Row, Edinburgh, EH3 5LR, UK. Email: r.yahr@rbge.ac.uk
Alexandra M. COPPINS
Affiliation:
37 High Street, East Linton, East Lothian, EH40 3AA
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Abstract

In the face of changing environments, conservation is tending towards an adaptive framework which accounts for the movement of species in the landscape. This makes it necessary to quantify population dynamics of species of concern. We studied the nationally scarce Cladonia botrytes, a priority Biodiversity Action Plan species in Britain, examining population dynamics at two scales: first, we studied the demography for two populations over a period of 13 years. The monitored populations declined to complete absence, starting from 77 mats on 19 stumps. Individual mats persisted maximally for up to 7 years, but over 78% of more than 290 individual cases persisted only 1 year, and more than 93% of mats disappeared within 3 years. Secondly, we performed a targeted regional survey of more than 800 stumps across an additional 27 sites in the centre of the lichen's distribution in Britain in 2006. The largest populations known from 1998 were revisited and found to no longer support the species; only 9 stumps in 5 sites supported C. botrytes in 2006. We show that C. botrytes in Britain is characterized by short individual and population persistence times, probably locally dependent upon vegetative succession including overgrowth and shading, and the degree of stump decay. The species' transient nature poses a particular challenge to conservation, though we identify comparable systems from which lessons may be learned.

Keywords

demographymanagementpopulation dynamicsshort-lived
Type
Articles
Information
The Lichenologist , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , March 2013 , pp. 265 - 276
Copyright
Copyright © British Lichen Society 2013

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