Timekeepers

Timekeepers: The best eco-sensors and last biodiversity frontier in the American West. Lichens cannot migrate, making them reliant on the rocks or trees to which they’re affixed, where they gauge subtle changes in temperature, humidity, air pollution, and more. They can remind us that survival, rarely solitary, can mean attachment and adaptation. They suggest, too, that life is rarely solitary, and that what appears small or still may be profoundly connected to the fate of an entire landscape. Yet they are often overlooked. Due to lack of attention, visibility, and study, lichens are among the least recognized organisms from a conservation planning perspective and are among the most threatened of any class of organisms. They represent arguably one of the last frontiers of biodiversity discovery for organisms in western North America. To look closely at lichens is therefore to confront a larger question—what else have we failed to see simply because they keep time on a larger timescale?...