The lichen flora of the Tibetan region (I.Southeast Tibet)

Up to now, the knowledge of lichens of the Tibetan region has been rather poor. Many areas (i.e. the lee-side of the Himalayas, big parts of the Tibetan Plateau and many mountain chains of the Southeast Tibetan Fringe Mountains) represent "white spots" in the lichenological world map. An expedition organized by Prof. Dr. Georg Miehe (Marburg/Lahn, Germany) for July and August 1999 will be a perfect opportunity to carry out thorough lichenological investigations of the easternmost part of the Nyainqântanglha-Shan and the west part of the Southeast Tibetan Fringe Mountains. The expedition is partly going to continue a project of 1994, in which part of the regions cited above were not reachable because of bad weather-conditions and/or missing permits. Many results of the named project (obtained from mountains "close" to the new expedition-area) have shown that lichen-taxa from Southeast Tibet and adjacent areas have developed a big variety in morphological and chemical features, indicating a proximity to one of the speciation centres of lichens. The study-region is situated on the border area between the vegetation-zones of the Asian "tropical mountain- rainforests" and its "mountain-vegetation above the timber line" respectively. The altitudes of the collection-sites ranges from 2000 meters to far more than 5000 meters, which allows realizing comparative studies on lichens from the submontane to the nival region. The aim of the expedition is to make extensive collections of lichenized (and lichenicolous) fungi in - lichenologically speaking - hitherto totally unknown mountain areas. The specimens will be scientifically treated (regarding morphology, chemistry, distribution etc.) in order to provide a comprehensive lichen-flora of the Tibetan region.

In the course of a lichenological expedition (in summer 2000) to the southeastern tibetan fringe mountains (prov. Yunnan), numerous lichen specimen were collected and subsequently databased. The scientific studies on the collected material revealed both a high diversity in chemistry within even one species and new molecular insights into relationships of lichen taxa. Many new or otherwise interesting lichens were found. Scientific questions, methodology, results, prospects A lichenological expedition (financed by the Austrian Science Fund) to the southeastern tibetan fringe mountains (frontier area of the provinces Yunnan and Xizang) was realized between July 23th and August 26th 2002. In connection with a former expedition in 1994, the aim of the project was to increase the knowledge on lichens of the whole tibetan area. Despite extremely bad weather conditions it was possible to collect numerous lichens specimens and to transfer them to Graz/Austria safely. Subsequently, the collected material was prepared, and all location-data were databased. Many specimens were already subjected to thinlayer chromatography. This chemical investigations showed, that there is a remarkable chemical diversity within the same species. Results on that matter (regarding the lichen species Sulcaria sulcata) have already been published. The freshly collected material is particularly suitable for molecular studies. In this regard, there has been done already a publication on the relationship of taxa from the lichen genus Cetraria with globose ascospores. In order to provide an easy access to the collections and to minimize the risk of a lost of samples by burning, many of the specimens have been distributed and published by means of exsiccata-issues (`Licheontheca Graecensis` and `Dupla Graecenisa Lichenum`). In this connection, several international institutions which house tried biological material (called herbaria) are supplied with duplicates from the same specimen. Further expeditions are planned for the near future. They should help to close (step by step) the rather big gap of knowledge on lichenized fungi (=lichens) and their parasites of the tibetan area. First talks dealing with further expeditions have already been conducted with Prof. Dr. Georg MIEHE (Institut für Pflanzengeografie, Marburg/Lahn, Deutschland), which is one of the most famous experts in tibetan plant-geography and with Prof. Dr. Liu SHIJIAN und Prof. Dr. Zhang WENJING (Institute of Mountain Hazards & Environment, Chineses Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, China).