Scientists mark 1,000th new species discovered in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Karen Chávez | The Citizen-Times

Show Caption Hide Caption Fall leaves and fall flowers blooming in the mountains The unusually warm start to fall in the WNC mountains has slowed down vibrant fall foliage, but there are still colorful spots at higher elevations the Smokies and the Blue Ridge Parkway. Fall wildflowers are also vibrant now.

"How do you lichen me now?" is what Smokies education branch chief Susan Sachs can be joking these days.

Sachs is one of five current and former National Park Service employees honored by being named for five lichens newly discovered to science in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The park and its nonprofit partner, Discover Life in America, recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory with the announcement of the project’s major milestone — 1,000 new species to science, with the discovery of the lichens.

Sachs, who has worked as an education ranger at the Smokies for 20 years, said she hasn’t yet “met” her namesake lichen, Lecanora sachsiana, but says she can tell from photos that it has “an understated beauty.”

Remarkable discoveries in Smokies

Over the last 20 years, many species have been documented for the first time in the park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, covering a half-million acres over the rich, lush, mountainous terrain on North Carolina's western border with Tennessee, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth.

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But the number of species discovered that are completely new to science — meaning they haven’t been documented anywhere on Earth before — is remarkable, according to scientists.

The lichens were discovered by lichenologists Erin Tripp, of the University of Colorado, and James Lendemer, of the New York Botanical Garden.

The past 10 years of their research, which is a part of the overall ATBI, has increased the park's knowledge of its lichen fauna by 130 percent over the original diversity estimates. The five new lichens were named to commemorate NPS staff who played a role in their work.

Sachs said the honorees learned about the new lichens and their naming, when Tripp and Lendemer announced their findings at the park’s annual research symposium last spring.

In order to be accepted as a new species, the research must be published and peer-reviewed by lichenologists around the world. Tripp and Lendemer’s research has been accepted for publication in the journal Systematic Botany.

Congratulations, you're now a lichen

The honorees were chosen for their years of working alongside the ATBI researchers. Sachs has been in the forefront with education programs related to biodiversity including starting the park’s lichen monitoring project at the park’s Appalachian Highlands Science Learning Center at Purchase Knob in Haywood County.

“Lichens are sensitive to air pollution, in particular sulphur,” Sachs said. “We monitor six different trees, primarily with high school students seeing if there is a difference between tolerant and sensitive lichen species. Our air quality is improving, so we might see more of our sensitive species coming back.”

She said Lecanora sachsiana is a crustose lichen, meaning it adheres to its substrate, making separation difficult, and grows on decomposing wood. It is only found in two high elevation areas in the world, one near Purchase Knob and the other in Shenandoah National Park.

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The other honorees include Paul Super, science coordinator for 17 years at Purchase Knob (Pertusaria superiana); Becky Nichols, park entomologist (Leprocaulon nicholsiae); Keith Langdon, retired inventory and monitoring branch chief (Heterodermia langdoniana); and Emily Darling, a former education technician (Lecanora darlingiae).

Nichols, who has been studying bugs in the Smokies for 21 years, is not new to the glamorous world of critter-naming honors. She was named for a new species of mayfly she found in Ecuador as a graduate student, and in 2010 a beetle – Sonoma nicholsae – discovered through the ATBI, was also named for her.

The majority of Nichols’ work is in conjunction with the DLIA, she said, facilitating work of outside researchers and keeping track of everything they find.

“You really have to be an authority on a group to know if what you’re discovering is new,” Nichols said of the ATBI work.

“These are highly trained lichenologist, hiking all over the park. They can tell if a lichen looks different than anything they ever seen. Sometimes it’s in a new microclimate, sometime they have to do testing in the lab with a microscope, sometimes DNA testing and compare it to closely related species in same genus.”

She said her lichen is nicknamed “Becky’s lucky dust,” and is widespread in the Southern Appalachian, from Pennsylvania to Alabama, found on calcerous sandstone and shale outcrops.

“It’s kind of green, and I think it’s pretty,” Nichols said. “It was a nice surprise and I’m very happy to be able to contribute to the research that goes on here in the park. It’s an honor.”

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Super said he was also flattered to hear about his lichen.

“Most people who work with biological diversity have some desire to have a reason to have something named after them,” he said. “We’ve all worked extensively with these researchers to help facilitate their visits to the park and get their information out to the public.”

Super said the park has been home to thousands of research studies over the years.

“It’s rather amazing that we’re finding new species known to science, like lichens. It speaks to the importance of a place like the Smokies for protecting biodiversity, and also speaks to how little we still know about the world we live in. There could be an undescribed species in anyone’s backyard.”

In 1998, the park and DLIA formed a partnership to conduct the ATBI to discover and understand all the species that inhabit the park’s 522,000 acres, including plants, fungi, millipedes, crayfish, tardigrades (water bears), worms, insects, and many other groups. The project involves cooperating scientists from across the United States and world, park staff, students, and volunteer “citizen scientists.”

Overall, the ATBI has more than doubled the number of species known to the park, from about 9,300 historic species records to 19,866 species known to the park today.

ATBI research provides crucial information for park managers and leads to a better understanding of ecosystem function and how it is dependent on biodiversity. The project involves students of all ages in the process of discovery, which ultimately inspires them to be the next generation of park stewards.

Learn more

Visit www.nps.gov/grsm. To learn more about DLIA, and how to get involved in the ATBI project, call 865-430-4757, visit www.dlia.org, or find them on Facebook.