… that blows nobody any good” is an old English idiom that suggests that most bad things that happen have a good result for someone, somewhere. And Markus Hauck and colleagues in Göttingen, Germany, have illustrated this nicely – and rather literally – with some work looking at lichens growing in forests in Germany. In [...]

Increased pH and dieback of lichen Lecanora conizaeoides is an epiphytic lichen adapted to very acidic conditions, and a reduction in atmospheric SO2 in western and central Europe has coincided with a dramatic decline in its distribution. Hauck et al. study lichen diversity and bark chemistry in northern Germany and compare the results with comparable data [...]