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Description
The initiative aims to establish a new long-term cooperation between the Charles University (applicant) and the Nord University (partner) in both the research and teaching activities. In addition, specialists from the Czech Academy of Sciences and from the NTNU shall participate in the proposed initiative as external experts specialized in the field of lichenology.
Different skills and expertise creates a mutually beneficial cooperation between all involved institutions from which both researchers and students will profit.
Planned activities include bilateral field-training courses and workshops
Summary of the results
We managed to produce the following outcomes:
1. Poster presented at the international IAL9 meeting (International Association For Lichenology 9th Symposium; organized once in 4-5 years)
2. The joint scientific paper published in the open-access peer-reviewed journal (Steinová J., Holien H., Košuthová A., Škaloud P. (2022): An exception to the rule? Could photobiont identity be a better predictor of lichen phenotype than mycobiont identity? Journal of Fungi 8, 275).
3. Two organised workshops in which both students and academics participated. This led to the knowledge exchange and the start of cooperation in new research fields (study on Cladonia norvegica with Einar Timdal and Vera Vtipilová; heavy metal lichens – Erik Moller and Heda Ghlimová).
4. Several presentations were presented during university seminars and the Czechoslovakian lichenological conference.
5. We managed to sequence 95 samples of members of Cladonia bellidiflora group by RAD sequencing (UW Madison) and 4 samples by deep whole genome sequencing. Besides that we produced over 200 sequences of mycobiont and photobiont ITS rDNA. We performed TLC on all material studied.
6. Altogether, we collected over 1000 of lichen specimens during the course of the project (by both Czech and Norwegian collaborators, both students and academics).
The cooperation with our project partners was generally smooth, although it was significantly impacted by Covid-19-related issues.