This award supports consolidation of the cryptogamic plants (a collective designation for algae, bryophytes, and fungi including lichens) collection of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (LAM) with the cryptogams collection of the University Herbarium at the University of California at Bekeley (UCB). The LAM cryptogamic collection consists of 215,000 specimens. The UCB has a large collection of cryptogams (some 430,000 specimens currently). Comparisons have shown that there is almost no overlap between LAM and UC in historical material. Many of the LAM collections have a California and West Coast emphasis, and all are from the Pacific Rim region, thus it would be best to have them physically located in the West and at the same location. The grant will fund compactor carriages and cases, as well as temporary help to make the transfer, curate damaged, poorly packaged, or inadequately documented specimens, and integrate the collections. Cryptogams, because of their small size and lack of roots, are superb ecological indicators. They are also important components of the ecosystem, forming soil crusts that retard erosion and serve as seed beds, epiphytic communities that trap and store nutrients and are an important part of nutrient cycles, and soil communities of decomposers, pathogens, and symbionts (including the critically important mycorrhizal associations with seed plants). There is a tight association of their distribution with substrate chemistry, other plants and animals and pollution, thus the cryptogam flora of an area is an important indicator of habitat quality and can be quite predictive about the level of particular pollutants. Protecting the LAM collections and making them easily accessible will enhance our ability to understand the taxa and their distributions, thus making this information available to academic ecologists, land managers, agency biologists, environmental consultants, educators, students, and the general public through hard-copy publications, educational programs, and the web.
