Three New Lichens with Erin Manzitto-Tripp

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New Species

New Species Podcast

106 episodes

2 weeks ago

Just a fraction of the species on our planet are known to science, but more are described and published every day. This podcast talks to the authors of these new species to get the behind-the-scenes stories of how new species are found and named, as well as why these discoveries should matter to everyone, not just scientists. Join us on our journey to better understand the wonderful biodiversity of our planet! Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies), and support the podcast at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod

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Natural Sciences

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Three New Lichens with Erin Manzitto-Tripp

New Species

31 minutes 18 seconds

3 weeks ago

Three New Lichens with Erin Manzitto-Tripp

How much do you know about lichens? These incredible taxa are understudied, but today’s guest is making sure they’re not undervalued. “You can’t look at lichens under a microscope and not become immediately obsessed,” says Dr. Erin Manzitto-Tripp. “It’s an endless world of magnificent, beautiful biodiversity.”

Erin works in the mountains of Colorado to describe new species of lichens along with the rest of her fantastic lab. For this paper they called not just on the power of nature, but also on the power of music. These three new species are named after the Indigo Girls, the individual members of the band and the band itself, in thanks for the many gifts Erin and others have received through their music.

Erin Manzitto-Tripp’s paper “The Thin Horizon of a Plan is Almost Clear: Towards a Lichen Biodiversity Inventory of the Southern Rocky Mountains, USA” is in volume 712 issue 3 of Phytotaxa.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.11646/phytotaxa.712.3.1

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Erin Manzitto-Tripp - Transcript

New Species: Lecanora indigoana, Lepraria saliersiae, Pertusaria rayana

Episode image credit: Erin Manzitto-Tripp

Listen to “The Wood Song,” whose lyrics gave this paper its title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0tUkepNqiA

Learn about the Lichens of Great Smoky Mountains National Park: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43188704

Check out Erin’s Lab and their work: https://tripp-report.com/

An article about these new species, with some beautiful photos: https://www.cpr.org/2025/07/24/cu-new-lichen-species-named-after-indigo-girls/

And the blog post from the Indigo Girls after hearing about their new species:

https://www.indigogirls.com/blog/bnjasxuusxhyfhyynob5oiko8om81a

Be sure to follow New Species on Bluesky (@newspeciespodcast.bsky.social) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and “like” the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast).

Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)

If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at NewSpeciesPodcast@gmail.com

If you would like to support this podcast and enjoy bonus episodes, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod