To learn how lichens might be able to adapt to climate change, researchers examined the evolutionary history of the algae that’s a part of 7,000 kinds of lichens. By studying genetic relationships between algae and building a giant family tree to show how different algae are elated to each other and how quickly they evolve, the scientists found that this algae can take hundreds of thousands of years to adapt to the changes in temperature that we expect to see over the course of this century. That means that these lichens are in dire trouble when it comes to climate change.
Click here for original story, Lichens are in danger of losing the evolutionary race with climate change
Source: ScienceDaily