This two volume work is the result of a project aimed at providing a thoroughly comprehensive study on terricolous lichens in India. Although slow and hence awkward, I reviewed the books online electronically being the way the publishers offer books to reviewers.
The first volume is a series of 5 lengthy papers about terricolous lichens in India. Three of these give a good idea of their lichenological and ecological importance including floristics, biogeography and conservation. Most of the species of terricolous lichens are found in the Indian Himalayas. Garhwal Himalaya has 98 species of lichen which constitute 14% of the lichens of the area. Species richness increases hugely (to 50 spp) at mid elevation of about 3 000 m where the tree limit is being reached and the density of trees is low. Species richness decreased greatly both higher up above the tree line due to disturbance by grazers and lower down due to tree cover and competition with other higher plants. Fruticose and foliose forms were apparently more tolerant of disturbance. How the values for species richness were arrived at did not seem to be clear. Over a larger area of Himalaya, with 212 species, the peak of species richness (74 spp) was at 2 400 m where the vegetation was dominated by deciduous trees. Different families of lichens had different peaks of diversity and for Collemataceae species it was lower (1 300 m) and that for the genus Stereocaulon was considerably higher (3 500 m).
There are also two chapters on photobiont diversity. The first on photobiont diversity in Indian Cladonia species looked for geographical patterns. Tereza Řídká, Ondřej Peksa, Himanshu Rai, Dalip Upreti and Pavel Škaloud succeeded in obtaining DNA sequences from 20 samples out of 57 from Cladonia specimens. The success was rather low probably due to material being too old and less than ideal conditions after collection. The sequences obtained add to the increasing number from all parts of the world. It is yet too early to determine how restricted these genotypes are until increased sampling is achieved. These authors found two unique genotypes which occurred at high altitude. The last chapter based on the literature looked for photobiont identity in the lichen species in soil crusts in relation to substratum ecology and altitude in Garhwal Himalaya. Anna Voytsekhovich, Lyudmyla Dymytrova, Himanshu Rai and Dalip Upreti found that 70% of the lichens had a photobiont and 30% had a cyanobiont. The phycobionts were Asterochloris in 46 lichen taxa, Trebouxia in 55 taxa and Nostoc in 41 taxa plus a few other cyanobionts in a few other species. There was no significant difference in the distribution of the photobionts with altitude. Although there are no new conclusions of any significance, this is a valuable contribution to information on photobiont distribution patterns.
The second volume is an identification guide and is a very well produced and written account. As usual it starts with general information over 12 pages on techniques used in identifying lichens including very good advice on how to collect and make specimens of terricolous species. The authors identified 5 different groups of terricolous lichens based on what they are growing on, e.g. soil, soil in rock crevices, moss, moss on rocks and dead plants. The account is based on about 4 500 specimens and gave rise to 7 new records for India. No new names are reported. There is a key to the genera then alphabetical treatment of genera with keys to species and descriptions of genera and species. There are colour photographs of specimens but none of lichens in situ in the field. There are distribution maps and references. The book includes 312 species which could be compared with and equivalent key to terricolous lichens of ltaly (Nimis and Martellos Reference Nimis and Martellos2004) which includes 439 species. India is 7 500 km long and 5 400 km wide and, say about 30 m km2, and Italy is much better studied but only 301 230 km2. We should perhaps agree with the authors that this book will form a foundation for further taxonomic work and be a very good starting point for more discoveries. Himalayas is the most diverse area, especially the Western Himalayas with 225 species. Nicobar and Andaman islands had none reported.
This looks like a very workable and useful guide and I liked the combination of keys and descriptions rather than including descriptive information within the key. As is usual, spot tests are given as are the main chemical constituents are for each species but there is not a note of how to check norsticitic acid microscopically with the crystals formed with KOH. This quick test is invaluable in species determination to distinguish the KOH reaction of norstictic from that of salazinic acid. There is an index which includes synonyms but does not employ the practice of indexing specific epithets. Interestingly I noted that some of the species that are also found in Europe looked very different to British material. When molecular methods are used more widely and including on Indian material, we may find even greater worldwide diversity. I did not determine the frequency of errors; the only one I did note was on page 114 where Collema auriculiforme is referred to as C. auriforme in the literature. I appreciated the involvement of both North American (Roger Rosentretter and Jayne Belnap) and European lichenologists (Ted Ahti and Christoph Scheidegger) as a significant number of the species have worldwide distributions. Cheaper options are downloadable chapters as pdfs from the Springer website e.g. Terricolous Lichens of India: An Introduction to Field Collection and Taxonomic Investigations. (pp. 1–16) for € 29·69 and Terricolous Lichens of India: Taxonomic Keys and Descriptions. (pp. 17–294) also for €29·69.
