Person: Green, Thomas George Allan
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First Name
Thomas George Allan
Last Name
Green
Affiliation
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Faculty / Institute
Farmacia
Department
Area
Botánica
Identifiers
5 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
Item Recent Warming and Cooling in the Antarctic Peninsula Region has Rapid and Large Effects on Lichen Vegetation(Scientific Reports, 2017) Navarro, Francisco; Ramos, Miguel; Pablo, Miguel Angel De; Blanquer, José Manuel; Valladares, Fernando; García Sancho, Leopoldo; Pintado Valverde, Ana; Raggio Quílez, José; Green, Thomas George AllanThe Antarctic Peninsula has had a globally large increase in mean annual temperature from the 1951 to 1998 followed by a decline that still continues. The challenge is now to unveil whether these recent, complex and somewhat unexpected climatic changes are biologically relevant. We were able to do this by determining the growth of six lichen species on recently deglaciated surfaces over the last 24 years. Between 1991 and 2002, when mean summer temperature (MST) rose by 0.42 °C, five of the six species responded with increased growth. MST declined by 0.58 °C between 2002 and 2015 with most species showing a fall in growth rate and two of which showed a collapse with the loss of large individuals due to a combination of increased snow fall and longer snow cover duration. Increased precipitation can, counter-intuitively, have major negative effects when it falls as snow at cooler temperatures. The recent Antarctic cooling is having easily detectable and deleterious impacts on slow growing and highly stress-tolerant crustose lichens, which are comparable in extent and dynamics, and reverses the gains observed over the previous decades of exceptional warming.Item Summer activity patterns for a moss and lichen in the maritime Antarctic with respect to altitude(Polar Biology, 2021) Schroeter, Burkhard; Green, Thomas George Allan; Pintado Valverde, Ana; Türk, Roman; García Sancho, LeopoldoThere is considerable scientific interest as to how terrestrial biodiversity in Antarctica might respond, or be expected to respond, to climate change. The two species of vascular plant confined to the Antarctic Peninsula have shown clear gains in density and range extension. However, little information exists for the dominant components of the flora, lichens and bryophytes. One approach has been to look at change in biodiversity using altitude as a proxy for temperature change and previous results for Livingston Island suggested that temperature was the controlling factor. We have extended this study at the same site by using chlorophyll fluorometers to monitor activity and microclimate of the lichen, Usnea aurantiaco-atra, and the moss, Hymenoloma crispulum. We confirmed the same lapse rate in temperature but show that changes in water relations with altitude is probably the main driver. There were differences in water source with U. aurantiaco-atra benefitting from water droplet harvesting and the species performed substantially better at the summit. In contrast, activity duration, chlorophyll fluorescence and photosynthetic modelling all show desiccation to have a large negative impact on the species at the lowest site. We conclude that water relations are the main drivers of biodiversity change along the altitudinal gradient with nutrients, not measured here, as another possible contributor.Item Photosynthetic rate and thallus size are not related in alpine yellow-green Rhizocarpon crustose lichens: Implications for lichenometry and growth(Geomorphology, 2018) Raggio Quílez, José; Green, Thomas George Allan; García Sancho, Leopoldo; Pintado Valverde, AnaLichenometry, first proposed at the beginning of the XXth century, is a technique that uses growth rates of saxicolous crustose lichens to date exposed surfaces over an age range of 500 years from present. Despite of the wide use of the methodology, it has been strongly criticized by several authors who consider that biological aspects involved in growth rates of lichens used are not sufficiently considered and that this will contribute to uncertainty in the final surface dating. The assumption, important for direct lichenometric measurements, that crustose lichens have constant growth rates through all their life span, is controversial, with some works pointing to a change in growth rate with thallus size in yellow-green Rhizocarpon sp. samples, the most widely lichens used for surface dating. This change in growth rate with size would contribute to inaccuracy in dating. In this work, we contribute to the discussion with a novel approach in which we measure several physiological parameters linked to carbon gain in 42 Rhizocarpon sp. samples of different sizes collected in the same locality. We found no significant relationship between thallus photosynthetic rate and thallus size indicating that possible growth rate variations over Rhizocarpon life span are not linked to carbon gain. The experiment performed provides a new data set to include in lichenometric modelling with the aim to obtain a better understanding of crustose lichens biology before attempting more feasible and accurate surface dating strategies. Measurements of length of activity periods and carbon allocation in Rhizocarpon are recommended to achieve future improvements in this direction.Item High nitrogen contribution by Gunnera magellanica and nitrogen transfer by mycorrhizas drive an extraordinarily fast primary succession in sub‐Antarctic Chile(New Phytologist, 2019) Benavent González, Alberto; Raggio Quílez, José; Villagra, Johana ; Pintado Valverde, Ana; Blanquer, José Manuel ; Rozzi, Ricardo ; Green, Thomas George Allan; García Sancho, LeopoldoChronosequences at the forefront of retreating glaciers provide information about colonization rates of bare surfaces. In the northern hemisphere, forest development can take centuries, with rates often limited by low nutrient availability. By contrast, in front of the retreating Pia Glacier (Tierra del Fuego, Chile), a Nothofagus forest is in place after only 34 yr of development, while total soil nitrogen (N) increased from near zero to 1.5%, suggesting a strong input of this nutrient. We measured N-fixation rates, carbon fluxes, leaf N and phosphorus contents and leaf δ15N in the dominant plants, including the herb Gunnera magellanica, which is endosymbiotically associated with a cyanobacterium, in order to investigate the role of N-fixing and mycorrhizal symbionts in N-budgets during successional transition. G. magellanica presented some of the highest nitrogenase activities yet reported (potential maximal contribution of 300 kg N ha−1 yr−1). Foliar δ15N results support the framework of a highly efficient N-uptake and transfer system based on mycorrhizas, with c. 80% of N taken up by the mycorrhizas potentially transferred to the host plant. Our results suggest the symbiosis of G. magellanica with cyanobacteria, and trees and shrubs with mycorrhizas, to be the key processes driving this rapid successioncyanobacteriaItem Continuous chlorophyll fluorescence, gas exchange and microclimate monitoring in a natural soil crust habitat in Tabernas badlands, Almería, Spain: progressing towards a model to understand productivity(Biodiversity and Conservation, 2014) Vivas, M.; Büdel, B.; Colesie, C.; Weber, B.; Schroeter, B.; Lázaro, R.; Raggio Quílez, José; Pintado Valverde, Ana; García Sancho, Leopoldo; Green, Thomas George AllanThe Soil Crust International project aims to better understand the functioning of biological soil crust environments (BSC) in Europe in order to understand the importance of these ecosystems.The final objective of this project is to inform and streng then protection strategies for these types of habitats in the frame of the European Union. To achieve this, four different soil crust regions have been chosen in Europe following latitudinal and altitudinal gradients .The work presented here is based on the simultaneous monitoring of gas exchange, chlorophyll fluorescence and microclimate of the most abundant BSC in one of these four locations, the Tabernas badlands, Almeria, SE Spain, one of thedriest regions in Europe. The five BSC types monitored are dominated by the lichen species Squamarina cartilaginea, Diploschistes diacapsis, Toninia albilabra and Psora decipiens, and by the moss Didymodon rigidulus.We aim to understand the conditions in which the BSC are metabolically active in order to get a better knowledge about the contribution of the BSC to the carbon budge tof the ecosystem. Our first results after nearly1 year of chlorophyll fluorescence and microclimatic monitoring linked to gas exchange data during typical activity days obtained in the field suggest similar physiological performance between the different BSC types studied. BSC were active under suboptimal conditions, and activity duration was not different whether measured by chlorophyll a fluorescence or CO2 gas exchange, a relationship that will be the basis of a productivity model.