Rocky shores are an excellent habitat to start your lichen journey and what is more enjoyable than to spend a sunny summer afternoon identifying some of the yellow and orange coloured lichens on the seaside. The zonation of lichen communities on the basis of the relative influence of the tide further helps with identification, and reveals interesting stories about the way these species have adapted to the vagaries of the tides, invertebrate grazing and exposure to sun.
Tutor: Petra Vergunst
Petra Vergunst is a field ecologist specialised in lichens and bryophytes based in NE Scotland. To engage people with lichens and bryophytes and help with identification, she runs the website Scottish Lichens and facilitates the similarly-named Facebook group. Petra is passionate about biological recording as a means to monitor the quality of the environment and has done extensive surveys of woodland and forest, the heritage landscape and coastline of NE Scotland. An ecologist by training, she is interested in how land management, nutrient-enrichment and other forms of disturbance influence the presence (and absence), lifecycle and ecology of lichens.
