Message - 7th IAL Symposium

Lichen: from genome to ecosystem in a changing world
1A-P
(1A-P11) Submission ID: IAL0219-00002
FIRST ACTIONS ON A PRELIMINARY RED LIST OF VENEZUELAN LICHENS
Hernandez J. E. 1
1 Research & Development, Fundacion Instituto Botanico de Venezuela, Caracas, DC, Venezuela
Until know, no country in Latin-American has included fungi and lichenized fungi in there red lists. Efforts
in fungi conservation and first attempts to create red lists have been done in Cuba, Argentina and Colombia.
The conservation of lichens is strongly related to the threat upon the existing vegetation where they exist. Unfortunately
in Venezuela a great extent of the natural habitats have been subject to fragmentation processes and
general destruction by man. Deforestation is the main factor in the destruction of extensive natural areas with a
great variety of habitats for lichens. Tropical forests are continually invaded for urban expansion and agriculture
uses. In Venezuela the fragmentation and destruction of ecosystems has reached concerning levels and in some
cases has reached points of no return to the original conditions. The destruction of habitats produce fragmentation
of the area of distribution which affects the reproduction decreasing the capacity of perpetuation of the
species in lichens and other groups. Little is known of the lichen collections in Venezuela. The project objectives
include elaborating an inventory of all the existing herbaria in Venezuela outside of the country. All this information
was to be introduced in a single database. The red list will be elaborated analyzing the ecological data from
the database and the existing information from catalogs and checklists from Venezuela. 17 herbaria in Venezuela
have lichen collections. 80% has been introduced in the database. Information from six foreign herbaria was
also included. The database has nearly 50 thousand entries. An endemic species lists has been started, plus
a preliminary red list for lichens. Threats to natural populations of lichens from Venezuela are being measured
on the basis of particularities of geographical distribution, habitat quality and, especially, the possibilities of land
transformation and in some cases of missing of large surfaces of land in natural regions of Venezuela. In the
process to assigning a degree of threat the methodological approach from IUCN was followed.
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