Lichen and lichenicolous fungal communities tested as suitable systems for the application of cross-taxon analysis

Lichens are outstanding examples of fungal symbioses, forming long-lived structures, the lichen thalli in which a multiplicity of other microorganisms are hosted. Among these, microfungi seem to establish diverse trophic relationships with their lichen hosts. The most specialised of these fungi are the parasitic lichenicolous fungi. of which the diversity has hardly been explained as a proxy for the diversity of lichen species. Here, we used an exemplar dataset of a well-studied alpine lichen community composed of 63 lichen and 41 lichenicolous fungal species and tested it to verify the strength of the co-occurrences of the two species groups with predictive co-correspondence analyses. The results showed that the distribution of lichen abundances affect the abundance and variation of lichenicolous fungi and support our hypothesis to use lichens as surrogate for lichenicolous fungi in the surrogacy analysis.