Identifier Profile: @jurga_li

This is the fifteenth entry in an ongoing monthly (or almost monthly!) series profiling the amazing identifiers of iNaturalist. 

Lichens! These symbiotic organisms occur all over the place but are often overlooked by many people. However, to Jurga Motiejūnaitė, iNat’s top identifier of common lichens,  

there are many exciting things about lichens: they are very colourful, they grow practically anywhere, some (like Ramalina menziesii [California’s state lichen! - Tony], or Pulchrocladia, or Stellarangia, or Eremastrella) have really crazy forms. Another pleasant thing is that they are not seasonal - one can find and enjoy them all year round (unless they are under deep snow cover). Some are very long lived and one can visit the same thallus for a number of years (if the habitat does not change dramatically). And even more interesting, lichens have parasites - lichenicolous fungi, which are spectacular by themselves.

Jurga lives in Lithuania and works at the Mycology Laboratory at the Nature Research Centre in Vilnius, where she studies lichens and lichenicolous fungi. She remembers catching pond organisms as a child, and collecting and identifying mushrooms and herbs with her parents and grandparents. When attending university, she studied plant communities and, after getting a job at the Botanical Institute, she started researching lichens.

When identifying on iNaturalist, Jurga often starts out  by filtering for fungi, Lecanoromycetes, or other taxa, and “for identification I use either personal knowledge, or consult extensive lichen literature that I own. For quick checks, especially for morphological variations of lichens, I use several reliable internet resources (e.g. ITALIC, Lichenportal, Lichens marins, etc.). Regretfully, online resources tend to disappear, change addresses and create inconveniences, so recommending them to other users is difficult…

Identification is part of my job, and identification from photographs gives me a different skill set from that required for specimen identification. As with any researcher, I like things to be as correct as possible, especially because Research Grade observations go to GBIF. I respect cleanliness of the data. I do not add comments to all observations. Many users seem to not be very interested, but when people ask questions, I always respond. I am particularly pleased when iNaturalist users take an interest in lichens and make obvious progress in their knowledge.

While Jurga’s focus is mostly on lichen and fungi in northern Europe, she’s helped out with identifications in southern Africa “because previously there was no one identifying lichens there, and I had gathered some identification material. But now I can almost resign from that position, because @ian_medeiros has taken over, and he is working directly on the lichenoflora of that region. I am very happy about this, as well as the fact that more lichenologist colleagues have joined iNaturalist.”

Introduced to iNat by Almantas Kulbis (@almantas), “a passionate promoter of iNaturalist in Lithuania, who works in non-formal education for students,” she says, Jurga joined in 2018. “By the way, it is especially thanks to him and his colleagues that iNaturalist is so popular in Lithuania.”

I use iNaturalist myself for many reasons. First and foremost, for entertainment and self-education. It is a wonderful tool to keep the mind and body (after all, you need to walk a lot!) active. It's also great fun to go back to my early experiences of trying to learn about different organisms in nature, not just the ones I study. Another area is education. I also encourage people to get involved in these activities when they have the opportunity - to look back at nature, to see its extraordinary diversity, to start respecting it more.

And finally, I use iNaturalist for work. Mycologists in Lithuania are few and far between, so citizen science is very useful for collecting the data on distribution of fungi and lichen species. Thanks to the iNaturalist community alone, one species that had not been found in Lithuania before and one that was thought to be extinct were found. Of course, IDing lichens from photos (even very good ones) is problematic, as most of them require microscopy or chemical tests (or at least reagent reactions and UV light). But it is still possible to ID some of them, so the iNaturalist community should not stop uploading observations of lichens, even if they can sometimes only be IDed down to the class level.

(Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.)


- Speaking of southern Africa, here’s an undescribed lichen from that region that Jurga helped get identified. Great discussion!

- When it comes to lichens, “Ramalina menziesii or genera Niebla and Pulchrocladia are my absolute favourites,” says Jurga.

- And finally, some adivce for finding and phtoographing lichens. “Lichens can indeed be found almost anywhere: even in water on the half or fully submerged rocks or on shells of barnacles. The only problem is that for many lichens a hand lens is required even to find them and a very good macro lens is needed to take a photo. For these which can be seen by the naked eye, my advice is to take several photos: one of general view of the thallus, one close up of any structures present on the thallus (ascomata, vegetative propagules, pseudocyphellae, etc.) and one close up of the edge of the thallus. For some foliose lichens (Peltigera, Nephroma, some others)  view of both sides of thallus is obligatory.”

- Check out the Lichenicolous Fungi of the World project!

Posted on March 30, 2023 09:15 PM by tiwane tiwane

Comments

This is great stuff. Jurga, it is wonderful that you use your extensive knowledge to both improve the citizen science data that gets put to good use by scientists, and also to help educate the amateur naturalists who are excited to learn more. The discussion of the undescribed lichen from southern Africa that Tony linked above is so fun to read, like a detective story but with multiple Sherlock Holmeses conversing.

Posted by sullivanribbit 12 months ago

Thanks for all the identifications and notes!! @ian_medeiros may be helping out in southern Africa, but he has very big shoes to fill and a great reference set to work with. Much appreciated - you are a legend.
Keep up the great work!

Posted by tonyrebelo 12 months ago

Once again, a great profile about an amazing naturalist! Looking forward to the following volumes of this interesting series!

Posted by nschwab 12 months ago

A super thank you to you, and for passing on your knowledge.

Posted by maryah 12 months ago

Ah, this is great! Lichens are really fascinating organisms, and the more people who are interested in them, the better. Yay for Lichens and the people who study them!

Posted by susanhewitt 12 months ago

Cheers Jurga!
let's lichenize the INat!

Posted by carlosvidigal 12 months ago

doing well! thank you for all your work, Jurga!!! :D!

Posted by diegoalmendras 12 months ago

Thank you so much for sharing your expertise, jurga_li.

Posted by sdz456 12 months ago

I am so grateful for Jurga! She is such a natural teacher with her patience and attention to lichens all over the world!! Not to mention, she has a wealth of knowledge, which she generously shares. And I am happy to learn that she loves Niebla and Ramalina menzeisii!! Two of my favorites too. I’m lichen her choices!

Posted by metsa 12 months ago

Very grateful for all of Jurga's work on lichens. Thanks for the new profile!

Posted by kemper 12 months ago

Great profile! I love Jurga's list of reasons to use iNaturalist.

Posted by janetwright 12 months ago

Gera diena, Jurga, nes čia radau Jus!

Posted by ramune_vakare 12 months ago

Thank you, Jurga, for all your patience (for non-perfect pictures of lichens) and the great knowledge you share with us!

Posted by kroolik 12 months ago

I paid little attention to them until recently! How fascinating they are! Thank you for all you do!

Posted by ken-potter 12 months ago

thanks for all your identifying help and advice over the years, Jurga! much appreciated! :)

Posted by lotteryd 12 months ago

Kudos Jurga! I was lucky to 'meet' you here from the very first days with iNaturalist and it's largely because of your impact my stream of observations is so 'lichenized' :)

Posted by ceacea 12 months ago

Congrats on the lichen identifications! There are so many of them and they're tricky to tell apart!

Posted by kaden_slone04 12 months ago

Thank you Jurga for your time and your knowledge! I am hooked on lichens for some time, but as experts for this group are only few, it's hard to get mentorship. Would love to join you on the field some day. :)
Would also agre it's important and very useful to map the taxons that cannot be determinated at species level from the photos. Some species are rare and experts for the groups might one day visit them or collect them to make a definitive ID. Work will be much easier if they have locations of 'suspicious' taxa.
Greetings from Croatia!

Posted by markod 12 months ago

Between Jurga, Ian and George with @mossynewf - I have a good list of @mentions for those difficult little 'planty' obs.
Taxon specialists with knowledge to share, and active on iNat!

Posted by dianastuder 12 months ago

As a real layman, I’d also like to say many thanks to Jurga here for finding the time for my questions, that is really very motivating for my entry into this fascinating world :-)))

Posted by gerstenhans 12 months ago

I've been uploading lichen observations from Thailand and Laos but have no idea how to approach ID'ing them. Sadly, I've had little support (@ave_s recently came to my aid though) so it is inspiring to see and read about Jurga leading the charge flying the lichen flag!

I was going through some old photos of a 2000 year old forgotton-about archeological site in Laos called the Hintang Stones and lichen made the star appearance for helping to put them on the inat map. I suspect lichen could provide a bridge of co-operation between archeology and biology.

Does anyone have any pointers on good introductionary resources to get started and progress with lichen taxology, especially for SE Asia?

Best wishes for all the lichen enthusiasts out there!!!

Posted by charlieglasser 12 months ago

@charlieglasser
It is really handy to find yourself a checklist. If you can get one, you are well on your way.
So we have - https://www.inaturalist.org/check_lists/1666357-Lichens-of-South-Africa - add it as a checklist to your country and you have this handy guide.

However, the real issue is that identification of most species requires "microscopy or chemical tests".
In one of my parallel universes I have a little chemical dispenser that I scrape on a corner of the lichen just before photography and it makes 4 short lines K, C, I & Pd. Alas in this universe everything leaks and messes.

Posted by tonyrebelo 12 months ago

Great profile and thank you for all the IDs you provided, @jurga_li

Posted by mangoblatt 12 months ago

Oh my goodness, great to see You there in the article @jurga_li ! And thank You so much for all the help! <3

Posted by thekakarinka 12 months ago

Thank you for all the help in southern Africa, Jurga!

Posted by jeremygilmore 12 months ago

Great choice for an identifier profile. Thank you, Jurga for all your contributions! Lichens rule!

Posted by driftlessroots 12 months ago

Brava, Jurga! I love this!

Posted by robinellison 12 months ago

Fascinating!

Posted by kneubaue 12 months ago

Dear @jurga_li, I'm really happy to see you in the iNaturalist Identifier Profiles.

Because of your help, I've become a lichen enthusiasts and want to learn much more about these fascinating and complex organisms.

I'm always happy when people from all over the world post more observations of lichens, even if they often cannot be identified precisely yet due to a lack of specialists like you. Your work here is really very important, people like you make iNaturalist great!

Posted by kai_schablewski 12 months ago

@jurga_li Thank you for sharing your knowledge with all of us.

Posted by anibotani 12 months ago

@jurga_li I deeply appreciate people like you who give their time so that others can learn and science knowledge moves forward! Thank you for all your identifications of my sightings especially!

Posted by joaotiagotavares 12 months ago

@jurga_li you definitelly deserve to be profiled here. Hard to describe how much I thank you for all your help with lichens. I would never learn so much without you. I can imagine there are many more people like me whom you help. Lichens are amazing.

Posted by fero 12 months ago

Thank you Jurga, you identified many of my lichen sightings ! :D

Posted by louis_raginwulf 12 months ago

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