Dear lichenologists
the following book is now available
F. Schumm & A. Aptroot: Seychelles Lichen Guide
ISBN 978-3-00-030354-1, A5, 404 pp, with 1127 coloured pictures, 90 Euro.
If you want a copy of the limited edition please write an email to fschumm@online.de with the exact adress for delivery and pay in advance 90 Euro to
Felix Schumm
Kto.Nr.: 2354 0001
BLZ 600 696 85 (Raiffeisenbank Wangen, Postfach 1120, 73117 Wangen, GERMANY)
IBAN: DE55 6006 9685 0023 5400 01
BIC: GENODES1RWA
Contents
Material and methods....... 1
Explanation of abbreviations 3
Survey of important literature....... 4
Survey of some common sterile lichens.......... 5
Main part of descriptons and pictures........ 7
Genera which are reported from the Seychelles, without pictures here.......... 348
Collecting localities of the illustrated specimens. 367
List of the the new species 384
Literature.. 385
Index........ 395
Scope
This book treats virtually all lichen genera and species known to date from the Seychelles. In order to make the book useful outside the area as well, not only the Seychelles species are treated, but generally also some additional ones. Many coastal lowland lichens are rather widespread, and the book thus contains a large set of species that can be found elsewhere in the tropics. Not surprisingly, the book becomes less useful when further away from the Seychelles, but still has some use in Asia and even in the neotropics. When at a larger distance from the Seychelles, it is in general more likely to be useful for crustose species than for foliose and fruticose species; already the Cladonia and Parmeliaceae flora of Madagascar contains many species not even mentioned here. Not all genera and species are illustrated, but those that are have been illustrated in full detail. No keys to the genera are included, as they rarely lead to succesful identifications. Keys can be found in some of the general books mentioned below and increasingly also on the internet. The best way to identify a species is to compare illustrations and read the genus entry, which will generally give the differences with similar genera, also those not known from the Seychelles.
Material and methods
Most pictures were made from material which was collected by FS during a 14 day excursion to Mahe, La Digue and Praslin, which was organized by Jan-Peter Frahm in October 2008. In some cases, when our material of pantropical species is not well developed, but already reported for the Seychelles by other autors, we took pictures of material from other tropical areas (Madagascar, Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia). Sometimes we made two plates from different samples of the same species, in order to show the variability. On every plate, the herbarium-number of the specimens is indicated and a list of the exact locations is presented at the end.
Most sections through apothecia and thalli are made with a freezing microtome and are 5-20 µm thick. Sometimes the lichens have been pretreated with acetone or alcohol in order to solve lichen substances before the section was made. Most sections have been stained with a solution of LPA (mixture of lactic acid-phenol-cotton blue-fuchsin acid) or treated with KOH and then stained with phloxine. Sometimes we made also pictures from the I+ reaction of the ascus tholus if it has diagnostic value. But there exists no standard method and we tried to apply for each species various methods so as to find an optimum that best shows the important details.
Descriptions
The desciptions on the plates are very short and generally give only additional information to the general overview like chemistry and will not repeat what can be seen in the pictures or is already mentioned in the text.
F. Schumm & A.Aptroot
